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I went for a drive to a nearby Wildlife Refuge, with the intention of photographing some of the ducks here in the duck factory of North America, the prairie pothole region of several tens of thousands of square kilometres of patchy wetlands surrounded by agriculture. This is ideal habitat for grain or aquatic-invertebrate-feeding birds, especially ducks. But I was only able to get reasonably close to some non-water birds. How do I put photos here from my flickr site? I can't seem to figure out the formating, so here are some Waffleimages pictures, shrunken a bit from the versions on Flickr.  Click here for the full 1600x925 image. These two were hanging out on my car as I was preparing to leave, so I took this shot through my living room window. What is that red thing? Everything else in the parking lot were house sparrows. It looks kinda like a juvenile cardinal, but I'm in central Saskatchewan, way too far north and west for Northern Cardinals, according to my National Geographic "Birds of North America".  Click here for the full 1600x1094 image. Mostly what I saw were tree swallows, which are still highly cool. This one let me get pretty close. Some of them were either dive-bombing me or taking the mosquitoes that were attempting to feast upon my blood. I tried to get pictures of some in flight, but they move way too fast for that. This is the first bird picture I've taken with this camera that I'm really happy with the focus on.  Click here for the full 1200x1183 image. Yellow-headed blackbird. This is the only one I saw today, but I expect they're fairly common, as I've seen them around before when I haven't really been looking for birds.
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May 17, 2010 06:02
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An immature Purple Finch? That crown is really throwing me, it could be an accidental Cardinal like you said.
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May 17, 2010 12:10
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theflyingexecutive posted:An immature Purple Finch? That crown is really throwing me, it could be an accidental Cardinal like you said. EDIT: House Finches just reach this area at the limit of their range, and adult males seem to have a bit of brown on top of the head. So I'm changing my vote to House Finch. But credit still goes to you, as the description for Purple Finch says "compare with House Finch". Also: "...especially numerous in towns." ExecuDork fucked around with this message at 01:56 on May 18, 2010 |
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May 18, 2010 01:53
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Yeah, it's House Finch, I can see the striping on the breast now.
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May 18, 2010 03:19
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I had no idea how tricky these little guys could be to catch. Kudos to those of you manage to capture the exotic ones. Even these common birds were giving me trouble.  
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May 18, 2010 05:52
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I wish I knew more about birds. My wife got me a book on birdwatching. It has 600 birds and it says there are thousands in my area. Great, I know the names of 4.
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May 19, 2010 00:10
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TomR posted:I wish I knew more about birds. My wife got me a book on birdwatching. It has 600 birds and it says there are thousands in my area. Great, I know the names of 4. That looks like a juvenile Chipping Sparrow. It's cool, you'll get the hang of it after a while. I don't know which bird book you have, but size (even before color) can be a big help in narrowing down what kind of bird you're looking at.
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May 19, 2010 00:55
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theflyingexecutive posted:It's cool, you'll get the hang of it after a while. I don't know which bird book you have, but size (even before color) can be a big help in narrowing down what kind of bird you're looking at. 1. LBF Little Brown Fucker 2. MBF Medium Brown Fucker 3. BAF Big Angry Fucker 4. "Seagull"   Click here for the full 1146x898 image. Same day as the others, here's a classic MBF. Also known as a Brown-headed Cowbird (unless I'm wrong, which I often am). toppro posted:I had no idea how tricky these little guys could be to catch. Kudos to those of you manage to capture the exotic ones. Even these common birds were giving me trouble. ExecuDork fucked around with this message at 04:28 on May 19, 2010 |
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May 19, 2010 04:26
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ExecuDork posted:This is true. I can also name four: Yeah that's definitely a Brown-Headed Cowbird. So your LBFs are going to be (in order of size) warblers and sparrows MBFs are wrens and robins BAFs are birds of prey and loving crows It should help you narrow it down. Then you can go to color and things like wing bars and spotted vs. striped vs. plain breasts. Does your field guide have ranges? It can also really help to just eliminate big chunks of birds because they come nowhere near you. Hope this helps. Also, we're like username buddies.
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May 19, 2010 04:59
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LBFs are mostly wrens and sparrows (the wrens I've seen have been pretty small) MBFs are overwhelmingly Sandpipers (they all look exactly the goddam same) BAFs includes anything over 30cm wingspan, and pissed off. Such as this Parasitic Jaeger: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9lhkDmNBBQ Warblers get their own special category: LYF (they're all yellow)
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May 19, 2010 05:56
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May 19, 2010 07:19
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Well, since we are showing off our bird-knowledge. May I present: A Shithawk  A pair of Giant-Shithawks  A Giant-Shithawk in flight  And a killdeer 
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May 19, 2010 16:19
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 Think this is a Brown Thrasher. Decently big animal, not afraid of anything.
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May 20, 2010 23:00
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Slo-Tek posted:
That looks pin sharp right at the eye. Tough to get given how much these guys tend to move.
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May 20, 2010 23:39
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toppro posted:That looks pin sharp right at the eye. Tough to get given how much these guys tend to move.
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May 21, 2010 02:40
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 It's not great, but considering it's almost a 100% crop (900 pixel wide before resizing to 800) I'm pretty happy with the result. Bird hunting with 250mm is a bitch
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May 21, 2010 02:45
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KingColliwog posted:
Yeah, it can be tough unless they are pretty close 
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May 21, 2010 03:03
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I took this recently. Forgot what bird it is...Any help? 
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May 21, 2010 12:44
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Wow... those are great. I have never seen a bird like that before, so I'm not sure of the type. Looks like a cross between a Belted Kingfisher and some sort of heron  .
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May 21, 2010 13:48
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That's not in the wild right? Anyway amazing picture quality and great colors. Loving it.
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May 21, 2010 14:10
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Yeh it was in a bird aviary at the Zoo  Sure makes getting close a lot easier. But I like to tell people it was shot in the wild.
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May 21, 2010 14:11
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saw this fine fellow on my bike into work today
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May 21, 2010 17:55
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For some reason, this female stayed on the wire holding the bird feeder for a few minutes. Long enough for me to go and fetch the camera.
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May 22, 2010 00:11
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Is this a blue heron? I don't know what this is:  A duck:  Baby geese:  Another duck: 
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May 22, 2010 19:27
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Looks like a great blue, and a night heron?  Think this is a song sparrow.. Took some shots of him and then he came back again to the same tree, but with a bug in his beak and chirping his head off.  Mohawk! edit: does look like lbb above though 'immature chipping'
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May 22, 2010 19:41
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TomR posted:Is this a blue heron? 1. Yes. Great Blue Heron. 2. Black Crowned Night Heron 3. 4. Male Mallard. Lets get specific with the names people 
Bahama.Llama fucked around with this message at 15:44 on May 27, 2010 |
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May 24, 2010 04:35
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Still completely lost when post-processing these types of shots. Yellow-headed Blackbird  Tree Swallow  Red-necked Grebe 
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May 24, 2010 16:40
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Bahama.Llama posted:3. Female Blue-winged Teal Female mallard?
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May 24, 2010 19:14
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InternetJunky posted:Still completely lost when post-processing these types of shots. 
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May 26, 2010 05:03
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ExecuDork posted:Where are you? Are you following me around? The last two weekends I've gone out shooting birds, and seen those three species both times.
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May 26, 2010 16:38
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Malalol posted:Female mallard? So true. Edited.
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May 27, 2010 15:43
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 Finally got the house finches at my feeder to stay there for a photo. For whatever reason they spook a lit easier than everything else in my yard.
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May 27, 2010 19:18
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Was testing my exposure settings in a park and got this completely on accident
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May 27, 2010 19:42
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Birds! What's this white one? Just a white goose?     
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May 29, 2010 01:13
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InternetJunky posted:I was in central Alberta (Buffalo Lake) for these shots. There was someone else there at the same time as me taking pictures as well...was that you? So there appears to be at least 3 of us on the Prairies with such interests. EDIT: I meant "interest in bird photography" not "interest in taking bad pictures". The latter is just me, I think. TomR posted:Birds!
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May 29, 2010 02:31
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Those last two are fantastic, TomR! Nice catches! The weather here has been really crazy and just all over the charts lately, so I haven't been able to drag my gear out for long periods waiting for birds.  This young northern cardinal got caught on my deck during a heavy shower today and the look it's giving pretty much mirrors my own mood lately. Ugh!
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May 29, 2010 05:48
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^^Thanks, that bird is not having a good day.ExecuDork posted:OK, these shots are just awesome. All of your pictures are great (I grinned widely at the goose butt, not sure why), but these two are fantastic. How close were you to these little guys? Thanks, butts are funny, that's why. I think I was about 20 feet away from the killdeer. They won't leave their young, which I don't think could fly yet. I probably could have gone closer, but I didn't want to give them too much of a heart attack.
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May 30, 2010 00:45
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The rare hoversparrow: Pretty common little guys:  
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May 31, 2010 04:08
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Killdeer
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May 31, 2010 07:17
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LPB (Large Preening Bastard - Damoiselle Crane)  I feel like I'm cheating a little, as none of my birding shots are taken in the wildy wild (London Wetland Centre). Just upgraded to the 100-300mm f/4 Sigma - what a huge improvement over the 70-300 cheapo kit lens. Amazed at the IQ wide open, fringing mostly under control too. Happened upon a birds of prey demo yesterday as I was about to leave:  Feisty Peregrine falcon - when I looked in its eyes I saw death  Spooked kestrel  The Molested Owl less_than_one fucked around with this message at 12:45 on May 31, 2010 |
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May 31, 2010 12:36
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