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Some Anna's Hummingbird yoga from this afternoon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb-LnEIH_eQ
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Feb 21, 2015 09:18
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Moon Potato posted:Some Anna's Hummingbird yoga from this afternoon. drat, nice work! I like the preflight poo poo. I've never seen a hummingbird poo poo before.
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Feb 21, 2015 18:31
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Bubbacub posted:drat, nice work! I like the preflight poo poo. I've never seen a hummingbird poo poo before. That poo poo had some serious velocity. The yoga poses were  ... love these hummingbird videos Moon Potato.Froze my rear end off this morning in -20 windchill trying to get some eagle photos. Succeeded...but the poor light made them unusable  On the plus side, I think I've nailed down their hunting routes, and they don't seem to notice me in my snow cape until relatively close. Would like to build a real blind though, since they do notice eventually and bank away.In the absence of cool eagle photos...more ducks instead. Sorry  Plop! by zacharytong, on Flickr  Ol' One Leg by zacharytong, on Flickr Dude's missing a leg   Birds of a feather by zacharytong, on Flickr  The Dock by zacharytong, on Flickr
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Feb 21, 2015 20:36
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polyfractal posted:That poo poo had some serious velocity. The yoga poses were I like this one, where are you based?
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Feb 21, 2015 22:40
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neckbeard posted:I like this one, where are you based? Thanks! A bit south of Plattsburgh, NY. These were taken at the Essex Marina, where the ferry normally keeps a channel of liquid water clear (although it just stopped running for the winter due to excessive ice)
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Feb 22, 2015 14:42
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Owl story incoming -- My wife and I drove for 10 hours yesterday only to finally find our first owl just as we were about to give up. The GGO was hunting from a treeline about 30 metres back from the road so we setup on the road rather than in the ditch to get a better angle if it plunged. It did plunge and grab a vole, and then returned to the treeline. Normally they give a warning if they are about to go for something, but this guy just dropped out of the tree and flew straight for my wife. It tried to grab something off the road just behind my wife, missed, and circled back only to sit about 3 metres away from us. Before we could really adjust it again flew right at my wife, this time almost landing about a metre behind her. At this point it finally noticed us, freaked out, and flew away. We couldn't figure out what was going on until we saw a tiny little tail sticking out of the snow on the road. Somehow that owl saw a tiny little shrew (1.5" inches long), in the snow, from 30 metres away. Pretty cool experience (the shrew ran into the ditch afterwards). So I guess you could say these are wild baited shots: Initial plunge:  Shrew spotted (my wife's shots):   From my perspective:  Lastly, does B&W work for this image? The background was gross so I thought this treatment might be better:  Moon Potato posted:Some Anna's Hummingbird yoga from this afternoon. polyfractal posted:
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Feb 22, 2015 17:40
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InternetJunky posted:Owl story incoming -- My wife and I drove for 10 hours yesterday only to finally find our first owl just as we were about to give up. The GGO was hunting from a treeline about 30 metres back from the road so we setup on the road rather than in the ditch to get a better angle if it plunged. It did plunge and grab a vole, and then returned to the treeline. Normally they give a warning if they are about to go for something, but this guy just dropped out of the tree and flew straight for my wife. It tried to grab something off the road just behind my wife, missed, and circled back only to sit about 3 metres away from us. Before we could really adjust it again flew right at my wife, this time almost landing about a metre behind her. At this point it finally noticed us, freaked out, and flew away. We couldn't figure out what was going on until we saw a tiny little tail sticking out of the snow on the road. Somehow that owl saw a tiny little shrew (1.5" inches long), in the snow, from 30 metres away. Pretty cool experience (the shrew ran into the ditch afterwards). That's pretty awesome, and you got some killer shots! Were you using the car as a blind? Or were you all snow-camoed up?
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Feb 22, 2015 17:51
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Linedance posted:That's pretty awesome, and you got some killer shots! Were you using the car as a blind? Or were you all snow-camoed up?
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Feb 22, 2015 17:59
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InternetJunky posted:Lastly, does B&W work for this image? The background was gross so I thought this treatment might be better: I think I'm getting used to this lens. The key to shooting at 600mm and getting reliably sharp shots seems to be 1/2000s and f/9 or f/10. I can do f/8 but it's unreliable at being sharp (some of the birds were cooperative this morning and sat while I'd take the same shot at f/10, f/9, f/8 to compare. Sometimes the f/8 shots were equally sharp, sometimes they weren't, I think it might be as much focusing and DoF as anything). 1/2000s is the fastest shutter speed my poor little camera has, so I'm really running up against some hardware limitations at this point. Tons of spotted towhees out today, much less shy than usual. The Anna's Hummingbirds were much harder to get shots of than usual, seemed like all of them were busy with mating displays, zooming around in pairs.      
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Feb 22, 2015 21:01
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InternetJunky posted:Can anyone recommend a good system for bird call playback using an iphone? My goal this year is to up my game a bit and go after specific species rather than just going to an area and shooting what I can find. To achieve this I need a playback device that is going to be able to bring in birds. Back from the last page... We've been using bigger speakers for our playback experiments but I realized our Clipster Bluetooth speakers (which we use to blast The Ramones when trying to sneak up on sage-grouse at night) would probably work pretty well for this. With an aux cable you could realistically use any small speaker and do pretty well. And this probably goes without saying, but the speakers in an iPhone are at the bottom, so if you aren't paying attention it's pretty easy to have the sound shooting 180 degrees in the opposite direction from where you want it to go. But yeah, they aren't super loud. Good lord the owl!! And Kenshin- love the towhee eating his salad. I'm off to sage-grouse land tomorrow- this time with a new camera (6D) and two new lenses (Tamron 150-600 and 400/f5.6L). I've been coming to this same spot for a number of years so it will be fun to look at it through some new tools.
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Feb 23, 2015 05:44
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BetterLekNextTime posted:Back from the last page... We've been using bigger speakers for our playback experiments but I realized our Clipster Bluetooth speakers (which we use to blast The Ramones when trying to sneak up on sage-grouse at night) would probably work pretty well for this. With an aux cable you could realistically use any small speaker and do pretty well. So walking quietly freaks them out but Havana Affair doesn't bother them at all? How loud is that speaker? The clip on design is a killer feature.
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Feb 23, 2015 07:11
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Kenshin posted:I think I'm getting used to this lens. The key to shooting at 600mm and getting reliably sharp shots seems to be 1/2000s and f/9 or f/10. I can do f/8 but it's unreliable at being sharp (some of the birds were cooperative this morning and sat while I'd take the same shot at f/10, f/9, f/8 to compare. Sometimes the f/8 shots were equally sharp, sometimes they weren't, I think it might be as much focusing and DoF as anything). What camera are you using again? Usually body upgrades aren't a high priority, but if you're stuck at 1/2000 then I think it's time to start saving for an upgrade.
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Feb 23, 2015 17:30
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InternetJunky posted:Whatever you are doing, keep it up. Those shots are super sharp and it's a shame that you are stuck at f/8 or greater. Are you sure the quality is much worse wide open? The Jay shot is incredibly sharp, but the background is harsh probably due to the aperture. I'm still not 100% sure about the f/8 thing, again, I think the body may be having a focus issue there for some reason, but when I get home this evening I could post a set of comparison shots of a spotted towhee at f/10, f/9, and f/8. The f/10 and f/9 shots are so close as to be nearly identical, the f/8 shot is noticeably softer (and I took two shots with each setting). I'm going to either pick up a used D7100 or (if it is actually announced) the D7200 this coming month (March). Kenshin fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Feb 23, 2015 |
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Feb 23, 2015 17:34
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BetterLekNextTime posted:Back from the last page... We've been using bigger speakers for our playback experiments but I realized our Clipster Bluetooth speakers (which we use to blast The Ramones when trying to sneak up on sage-grouse at night) would probably work pretty well for this. With an aux cable you could realistically use any small speaker and do pretty well.
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Feb 23, 2015 18:24
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I know there's a bunch of Tamron 150-600 owner's in this thread, a buddy of min who also has one sent me this link today: TAMRON ANNOUNCES A NEWLY DESIGNED OPTIONAL TRIPOD MOUNT RING FOR SP 150-600mm VC USD http://www.tamron-usa.com/news/35mm/150600_A011_tripodring2015.php
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Feb 23, 2015 19:54
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Great owl shots from you and your wife, InternetJunky. The B&W shot is working for me - I didn't notice anything off with the background until you mentioned it and I started nitpicking.InternetJunky posted:This shot is beautiful. Hopefully you can get an eagle shot with the same background. I staked out a kingfisher's favorite spot today. It caught three fish; the first one was nearby while I was shooting a grebe that popped up right in front of me, then two way out in the wetlands where I couldn't capture any detail. It ate them right in front of me, though.  queenfisher-strike by Redwood Planet, on Flickr The Snowy Egret that lets me walk right up to it had some nice light on it as I was leaving the tidal wetlands.  snowy-head by Redwood Planet, on Flickr The juvenile White-tailed Kite roosted closer to the trails than usual.  young-kite-sunset by Redwood Planet, on Flickr Can you tell your Eared Grebes from your Horned Grebes with their winter plumage?  
Moon Potato fucked around with this message at 10:20 on Feb 24, 2015 |
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Feb 24, 2015 09:24
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I did some exploring along the Blue Lake stretch of the Mad River this morning, since an incoming storm and a busy weekend won't leave time for shooting until next week. I had seen a young Bald Eagle in the distance there last week and was hoping to have another encounter with it, but no luck. There were plenty of other birds, though. hummingbird-iridescent by Redwood Planet, on Flickr I encountered this hummingbird when I wandered off the trails away from the river to pee. It flew up and hovered right in front of me while I was pissing and flared its gorget at me. Its favorite perches were right nearby, so I think that was hummingbird for "gently caress off." This is the closest I've gotten to a Merlin this winter.  merlin-flight by Redwood Planet, on Flickr Black-capped Chickadees are gobbling up the willow seeds.  chickadee-willow2 by Redwood Planet, on Flickr I caught a couple distant glimpses of an Osprey while I was making my way along the river, and spent a long time staking out a spot where I had seen it circling in the hopes that it would come back. It didn't, but that's because it had caught a fish and perched right across the street from where I parked.  osprey-perch by Redwood Planet, on Flickr  I also found a kingfisher nest/burrow, but the morning light doesn't reach it. I'll try staking it out in the afternoon next week. Edit: goddamnit, I just got a message telling me that the Northern Saw-whet Owl is back and perching out in the open, but I'm stuck gallery-sitting for the next few hours. Moon Potato fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Feb 27, 2015 |
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Feb 27, 2015 00:35
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 Great shots recently! Another cold morning waiting for eagles to do things. They didn't do things. Sat for three hours watching two eagles remain perched on a tree. They are either lazy or terrible hunters, only trying for ducks twice, and half-heartedly at that. Ended up flying away when a red-tailed hawk showed up to watch the ducks. Welp. Continuing the trend of complaining about gear, can I get a reality check? I took 30-50 in-flight shots of the eagles this morning. All were in decent-ish light, 1/3200 @ f8 and between 500-800 ISO. They are all poo poo. Here is one of the better shots, e.g. you can actually see some detail around the eye, instead of a big blurry mess:  Click for Huge(there are some jpeg artifacts visible in the sky, but the eagle itself looks basically the same as the RAW) Is it unrealistic to expect a subject of that size to have better detail? Is it just too far away? Or should I be expecting better detail given that size, meaning it's either gear or user error? Getting awfully frustrated coming home with a few hundred images and all of them being unusable. Only salvageable image this morning:  Juvenile Bald Eagle by zacharytong, on Flickr
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Feb 28, 2015 19:26
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polyfractal posted:Continuing the trend of complaining about gear, can I get a reality check? I took 30-50 in-flight shots of the eagles this morning. All were in decent-ish light, 1/3200 @ f8 and between 500-800 ISO. They are all poo poo. Here is one of the better shots, e.g. you can actually see some detail around the eye, instead of a big blurry mess:  Full size: http://colquhoun.smugmug.com/photos/i-8nB9kVF/0/O/i-8nB9kVF.jpg Maybe my shot has a bit more detail, but that is probably from the gear. Morale of the story: get closer!
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Feb 28, 2015 20:04
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InternetJunky posted:Morale of the story: get closer! Awesome, thanks! I never know how much other people are cropping, and I was legitimately starting to worry that something might be wrong with my setup. Good to know it's just over-cropping.  /me goes back to working on his fieldcraft and winter camo.
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Feb 28, 2015 21:08
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Alright, I'm pretty sure at this point that my camera body really does just have trouble focusing at 600mm rather than the lens being soft (as long as I'm shooting at 1/2000s). This shot was accidentally taken at f/6.3. (cropped 1:1 but retains about 80% of the original frame vertically. Shot landscape orientation) Had a really good morning and got some really good shots of a juvenile red-tailed hawk and later a great blue heron. Will post later when I'm done processing all of these. edit: done     The heron ones were on a monopod, and I actually loosened the collar and rotated my camera to portrait orientation for that first heron shot. (I know this is normally common but I've never bothered to do so before!) Kenshin fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Mar 1, 2015 |
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Feb 28, 2015 22:34
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So, uh.... you guys seen this going around Facebook and poo poo? A weasel tried to attack a green woodpecker. The bird apparently got away after giving the rodent a ride.
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Mar 3, 2015 20:23
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Some Snowy Egrets: snowy-chase by Redwood Planet, on Flickr  snowy-floof by Redwood Planet, on Flickr  snowy-flying by Redwood Planet, on Flickr A Great Egret:  ge-fishing by Redwood Planet, on Flickr  ge-neck by Redwood Planet, on Flickr And a making GBS threads bird:  harrier-poop by Redwood Planet, on Flickr Moon Potato fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Mar 4, 2015 |
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Mar 4, 2015 08:35
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Rotten Cookies posted:So, uh.... you guys seen this going around Facebook and poo poo? A weasel tried to attack a green woodpecker. The bird apparently got away after giving the rodent a ride. Yup, I saw that yesterday. I like the mention on the newspaper site that the series of pictures are "blurred". Like an editor decided to backhanded compliment the photographer by apologizing for less-than-perfectly-focused pictures taken in haste at long range.
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Mar 4, 2015 17:32
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A few weeks ago I was out for a drive and near the end of it this guy flew low across the highway in front of me and landed on this sign, conveniently close to a safe place to get off the highway. SD 140 50 by Execudork, on FlickrHe put up with me for a few minutes then went back from whence he came.  SD 140 51 by Execudork, on Flickr
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Mar 6, 2015 22:25
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What a pretty owl. I like the shot of it flying away against the dark trees. I staked out a popular feeding spot in Butcher's Slough for a couple hours while wearing a blind yesterday. This Great Egret was kind enough to do two nearly identical takes of missing a fish so I could cut between a close up shot and a wide angle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JSovku0228 This one caught a meal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-3ZaQBAHDY And a couple Western Grebes popped by a few times while chasing a school of fish around. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUsa7CI4YW4 I think this is a White-throated Sparrow, but it's not super common right along the coast so I'm not 100% confident in that ID  sparrow-nibble by Redwood Planet, on Flickr I stalked this falcon for about an hour, hoping it would make a pass at some ducks or songbirds, but it just sat around for a while, then flew out over the bay at sunset.  peregrine-sunset by Redwood Planet, on Flickr The young kite landed on a bush to eat its vole  kite-nibble by Redwood Planet, on Flickr
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Mar 7, 2015 05:25
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Moon Potato posted:I think this is a White-throated Sparrow, but it's not super common right along the coast so I'm not 100% confident in that ID I'd go with Golden-Crowned, but I can't rule out a 1st winter White-Throated I suppose.
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Mar 7, 2015 05:38
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BeastOfExmoor posted:I'd go with Golden-Crowned, but I can't rule out a 1st winter White-Throated I suppose.
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Mar 7, 2015 06:09
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More sea birds because I'm too lazy to go out of town.    
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Mar 7, 2015 07:54
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First bird post since I got to Wyoming. Tomorrow will be my first day on a sage-grouse lek this year. Red Canyon Dipper 1944 on Flickr
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Mar 8, 2015 02:51
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A very foggy morning in Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge. Only a few really good pictures, but lots of great species I didn't get "good" pictures of including great horned owl, rufous hummingbird, and northern shrike. Marsh wren  Tree swallows delivering food to their nest box  Red-bellied sapsucker
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Mar 8, 2015 03:45
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Kenshin posted:
Nah, they're just shopping for houses at this point. They just arrived in this area in the last week or two and it'll be a bit before they have chicks to feed.
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Mar 8, 2015 04:35
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A neat trick with tree swallows is to find some chicken or duck feathers (downy ones, not flight feathers), and let the feather float on the breeze in view of a tree swallow that's got at least most of it's nest built. They usually can't resist catching it out of the air and flying back to the nest.
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Mar 8, 2015 04:43
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A few more from this morning, finally really getting used to this lens, and the spring sunshine isn't hurting.  
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Mar 8, 2015 23:35
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Hope you guys don't mind another couple months of sage-grouse photos. I was actually really happy with how the Sigma 150-600 did today. I thought I'd be fighting the light more but I was able to drop down to 800ISO quicker than I expected. AF was pretty good for me today. This was my first extended session using it on a tripod and not surprisingly it's a vast improvement with a lens this large. I haven't sorted through all of them but here are a couple. The head shot is ~100% crop. Half-light male grouse display fs 1949 on Flickr Profile-headshot-male grouse 1951 on Flickre: bonus- just a half-second post-poo poo  Buttprint with poop 1952 on Flickr
BetterLekNextTime fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Mar 9, 2015 |
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Mar 9, 2015 00:59
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Keep the grouse photos coming, BetterLekNextTime. Those are looking great. A few from this afternoon: Male Anna's Hummingbird  annas-flare by Redwood Planet, on Flickr A pair of Belted Kingfishers seem to be courting each other around one of the tidal sloughs. Here's the male coughing up a pellet:  kingfisher-pellet by Redwood Planet, on Flickr And the female:  kingfisher-willow by Redwood Planet, on Flickr A White-tailed Kite looking for prey:  kite-flyover by Redwood Planet, on Flickr
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Mar 10, 2015 08:09
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I'm in Whistler, BC for a couple days with all my gear. Anyone have a good shooting site?
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Mar 10, 2015 15:46
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This dude walked towards my blind this morning. I think he could hear my shutter and started making a staccato contact call. I'd fire another burst and then he'd do another call. Probably coincidence, but it kind of seemed like he was responding to the sound like it was a bird. Then another bird took off and he flew away. Never had that happen before. I've got to remember my camera has a quiet shutter setting. Male sage-grouse approach fs 1953 on Flickrand a super blurry photo of a raven bothering the grouse early morning. Came out kind of neat looking.  Early Raven Blur fs 1952 on Flickr
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Mar 10, 2015 20:36
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Homing pigeon? the red band reads "0621". He wasn't shy at all.
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Mar 10, 2015 21:26
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Yay!quote:Hello, BetterLekNextTime posted:Hope you guys don't mind another couple months of sage-grouse photos. I was actually really happy with how the Sigma 150-600 did today. I thought I'd be fighting the light more but I was able to drop down to 800ISO quicker than I expected. AF was pretty good for me today. This was my first extended session using it on a tripod and not surprisingly it's a vast improvement with a lens this large. I haven't sorted through all of them but here are a couple. The head shot is ~100% crop.
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Mar 12, 2015 19:21
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