Fog lifting and sun breaking through. Low tide, reflections, birds. Peace.
Tag: birds
Toity poiple boids all poiched in a twee, toity poiple boids all choiping at me!
These guys were all lined up on the rocks, not trees, below the bike path in Pacific Grove. No idea what they are but they created lines and patterns, rather camouflaged, which took a bit to discern initially.
Lomo Metropolis, Nikon FM2n, 100mm Series E.
Our trip to Monterey was wonderful, and this is the only souvenir we have probably ever boughten in our lives: a glass paperweight with a turquoise and gold jelly fish.
Today I went up to the Botanical Gardens, one thought on my mind: to take images of birds with my 70-300mm lens on the Nikon V3. As the V3 has a 2.7 crop factor, this makes the 70-300 the equivalent of 189-810mm.
I’ve never used this lens to specifically capture birds, but it did a pretty good job. My technique was shutter priority, with the shutter set to 1/1000 to keep blur to the least possible amount; I also set the iso to 3200 down (priority based) and the f/stop to about 5.6 to 8.
I have absolutely no idea what these birds are, nor was I really aware of birds until I was determined to find them. I had hoped to see a road runner – they are up there! – but I did see four distinctively different ones, which I caught. Looking in Peterson’s Field Guide to Birds of Western North America, this looks like a wren, but what kind???
The 1 Nikon 70-300mm lens does a pretty good job overall. It has the advantage of being lightweight with image stabilization. Coupled with the V3, I could catch multiple images in a row, clicking away as the birds moved around, and then choosing the best of what I got.
More to follow!
Note: A fellow on flickr says these little guys are White Crowned Sparrows!
Today I cleaned up this blog a bit, and in doing so created pages for each month of the years I’ve been doing this . . . over four years. In July of this year, I was not in a good mood about photography or what I was doing. My ego was quite into it, in a bad way. Burn out is not a good thing. While rummaging through things, I came across this picture from February 2014. I rather like it, though it is better suited for Halloween than Thanksgiving!
“Da Boids” is New York for “The Birds.” As in “Toity poiple boids all poiched in a twee, toity poiple boids all choipin at me. Choip, choip, choip.”
Anyway, these are some kind of water bird with little tail-like feathers on their heads. They stalk their prey, as does the heron, but on considerably shorter legs. Altogether, they are rather lovely, with their bright legs and blue feathers. They are found inland as well as near the shore.
There is something quite fascinating about sailing past cliffs rising straight up from the sea and watching the birds circling, diving, nesting, and perching on the stones. In the middle of a whale-watching crowd, the sense of loneliness and isolation is found here.
A few weeks ago we met up with some friends in Ojai, California, for a luncheon date. We got there early, traveling through backroads, and then wandering through the different parts of town. This was taken in one of my favorite stores in the world, Rains, which has clothing to kitchen supplies, and much in between.
I used film and the Nikon FM2N – but don’t recall the film used, and am too lazy to look it up right now!
The Glass Aerie 