Birds and more birds...

This post is all about birds. Well, almost. So if you're not into birding, you can either scroll through and enjoy the pictures, or skip it and wait for next time when I'll put up some more of the off-the-wall stuff you're used to! I wanted to document my two visits to Carden this week so I made this into more of a photo essay than usual.

Carden Plain — a productive morning

I stopped by for an early season visit to the Carden Alvar last Thursday (April 21) expecting that I wouldn't see much. I was passing by, had a couple of hours to spare so I thought I'd see what's what. Besides, I had that new-to-me Tamron 150-600mm f/5.6-6.3 lens and wanted to give it a preliminary workout. Pretty well all of the shots below were handheld at 600mm.

First step, make sure everything is working. So I focused in on a pair of distant Canada Geese on the wing, and here's what I got:

Not bad, given how far away they were.
(you can click any picture to see it full sized)

First up were a couple of horses. Carden is a working farming area, there are horses and cattle there too.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this little lady was just a wee bit pregnant.Or this is the roundest horse I ever saw!  

This little guy can't be more than a couple of days old. Already running around. Imagine a human newborn...

Here he is doing what mom is doing. Then he gives up and goes for her teat... mom is still very distended so as I said, he's a newborn. By the way, I waited patiently for them to get in this mirrored position. 

OK, off in search of avian targets! A few of the bird species are back and the first I encountered was the "woo-woo-woo-woo" of the Wilson's Snipe, the sound it makes in flight. Their behavior was different from later season, when they like to pose for the camera on a fence post. They swooped around, then landed virtually hidden in the grass. They're hard to see until they move!

It may look a bit darker than the dry grass but so do any number of rocks and clods of dirt! 

I stopped at this stand of deciduous trees because there were birds calling all around me! They were hiding, though. 

Here's one! It's a brown Thrasher hiding in the aspens. 

A little further down the road is the blind, built by the Couchiching Conservancy to accommodate birders. It was still padlocked, due to be opened any day now. By the way, if you want to know more about the Carden Plain, visit their website at http://www.cardenplainimportantbirdarea.com/, it's a very good read, although it's a few years out of date. The most commonly seen bird there is the Eastern Phoebe, as well as the tree sparrow, who often nest right in the blind. There was a mating pair of Phoebes there.

Posing on a stick out behind the blind. A pair were building a nest.

An interesting sidebar about this picture if you're a photographer... I'm new to the world of 600mm lenses. The few times I've tried one in the past (even Dr. Ron's world class Nikon 600/f4) I've had little success capturing sharp images. Practice, of course, but in the meantime I've erred on the side of faster shutter speeds. This image is no exception, it was shot at 1/1600 sec at f/7.1 (why not f/8? I dunno...), matrix metering with +2/3 stop exposure compensation, and that exposure combination bumped the ISO up to 5000.

Other than normal sharpening and a bit of cropping, the only thing I did to this image was to run it through Topaz DeNoise 6 and then I masked the effect on the bird itself, so what you see is what I got. I'm very pleased with the tonality of the image and you will be seeing it in competitions!

Why did I write this detail? Because what I didn't say was I had dragged out the tripod and gimbal mount and there was absolutely no reason to shoot at such a high speed! I probably could have shot this at 1/250 sec, ISO 1000 and pulled more detail out of the feathers.

Unfortunately, the spot they chose was on the sill in front of one of the shutters. So either it's going to get knocked down when the shutter opens, or the conservancy will latch this shutter closed for the season.  

Across the road, at the top of a cedar tree, this Brown Thrasher was singing his heart out!  

I drove down to the Sedge Wren trail and walked in just to the corner. Nothing happening. Because I had to get going, I headed back down the road. On the way out, I passed through a flock of at least four-and-twenty (red winged) blackbirds

Near the entrance to Wyllie Road, on the west side, I saw two Pileated Woodpeckers

Then finally, I saw a pair of tree swallows building a nest in a bluebird box:

Probably the male, standing guard while wifey did all the work! 

All in all, a productive couple of hours on an early season day. I'll be baaaack...

Hi, I'm Baaaack...

An early morning Facebook post from Rico Forlini saying he was at Carden Plain got me into the car and enroute there on Sunday. I did run into him and Tim — they were just leaving as I arrived. We did get a quick look at an Eastern Meadowlark but out of photo range.

Carden is interesting because you never know what you'll find. When Rico told me he saw an Eastern Loggerhead Shrike at the blind, that's where I headed! So without further ado...

This guy was quite far away, so this is a 100% crop – 1:1 – at 600mm. I tried a series of different exposures and chose what I thought was the sharpest one: 1/2000 sec at f/8, ISO 3200, a lot of sharpening and noise reduction! It's perched on top of a Hawthorne bush, it's favoured nesting tree since the thorns protect the nest from predators. 

The Eastern Loggerhead Shrike was listed as a critically endangered species in Canada back in 1991 and the population has shrunked even more since then. According to Wildlife biologist Don Sutherland (who happened to be standing beside me when we (ok, when "he"!) spotted this bird), there are fewer than a dozen mating pairs in the Alvar. He remarked that this one was not banded, so it isn't one that was re-introduced, it's native.

Don had an outstanding piece of optics with him. This is similar to the model he had...

It was astoundingly clear when you looked through it. I'll make the Swarovski shop one of my very first stops after leaving the lottery office the day I cash my winning ticket. With camera adapter, you're looking at about $5K. If you've never looked through one of these and you do, have your chequebook handy! 

OK, back to the planet Earth! The usual culprits were on hand to be photographed. Although I already have a picture of a Phoebe, I like this one for the sharpness and tonality

Eastern Phoebe with nest-building material 

You don't only see exotic and rare birds. This American Robin posed precisely so that he could be framed by the tree

Carden Plain is well known for its bluebird population. This early visitor was basking in the momentary sun as the clouds split for a minute. 

This is a female yellow-shafted Northern Flicker who popped by for a look-see but never came out far enough to give me a shot of the whole bird.  

And finally, here's another Brown Thrasher in mid-song. I thought the composition and framing of this shot was worth posting here, even though I have another couple of Thrasher shots up above. 

I'm reasonably happy with the Tamron lens, for birds at a middle-distance but not with long distance stuff. Maybe it's me, I need more practice. I seem to get less sharp results when I'm on the tripod than I do handheld, there are some techniques I need to work on, I imagine. 

— 30 —

I shot a LOT of pictures over the past couple of weeks!

...I don't just mean I ran my shutter count 'way up, I shot a bunch of different venues:

• I was at Carden Plain twice, first with Dr. Ron and Mark and Dan Busby and Bill Bunn, and then on my own on my way into Toronto the following weekend.
• Ron and Mark had a "concept shoot" in mind. Wendy Evenden from the Haliburton Highlands Camera Club volunteered as a model. I admit I was exhausted and couldn't concentrate on this one by the time we got out there to shoot.
• The HHCC had an outing to Wintergreen for brekkie then on to some interesting venues. I haven't even LOOKED at those pictures yet!
• I drove around during the week looking for those elusive turtles that are supposed to be on the roads. 
• I was at the Canadian Raptor Conservancy in Vittoria, Ontario (north shore of Lake Erie, near Port Dover). I've looked through some of these pictures but I'm not done yet.
• On the way home, I set up a shot at a wind farm south of Hamilton.

Phew! I'm going to break this into more than one blog post so I can do justice to some of the images. But before we start...

A different Medium

OK, look at the trees on the left in the header picture. Then look at this:

Painted with my own hot little hands with a brush and oil paint on canvas.   

Big thanks go out to Harvey Walker who is a great artist and an able teacher! Anyone who could teach me to paint has to be good. Obviously I didn't achieve the nuances of shape and shadow that he does but every artist does things his or her own way, right? I still need to do the sky (without messing up the trees!) and I might add a rock in the lower right foreground for balance. the bush on the right was added out of my imagination. See, you can do that when you paint! Artist's license...

Birds, birds, birds!

You know those photographers you see running around out there wearing camo and toting howitzer-sized lenses and heavy duty gimbal mount heads on sturdy tripods? There's a method in their madness. It's hard to get those shots without all that gear. When I went to Carden Plain with Ron & Mark et al, Mark loaned me a Tamron 150-500mm lens and I have to say, I'm sure the lens was better than I was but I didn't get much usable stuff. You need practice with these long lenses.

You also have to know how to spot the birds you're hearing. I didn't do too well! Nevertheless, here are a few shots from that day, all at 500mm.

Male red-winged blackbird making himself heard 

Here's another one (not at Carden, on Highway 48 near Bolsover) catching his lunch. I normally wouldn't post a blurred image but what a great story! He took off from a power line in pursuit of this bug.

Same bird, after his snack, making his presence known to the ladies. 

We were at the Osprey nest on Highway 48. Weird things going on there: THREE birds, not two. Odd... 

I got some tree swallow shots but not much else that day. Dan's pictures blew me away, I'm not posting mine! When I came back the next week, there were a few more birds around: I noted a total of 12 species. Here are some pictures:

Tree swallow. Nowhere near Dan's but this is unedited, straight out of the camera. 

Wilson's Snipe. It's a pretty tight crop, I only had my 70-200mm plus 1.7x converter and I shoot full-frame. 

Barn Swallows. I shot from inside the blind on Wylie Road (all the shots were on Wylie Road). They weren't quite so close together, I used content-aware-scale to bring them in. The guy with the twigs hung onto them for the longest time. In hindsight, I wonder if the nest was in the blind and he couldn't come in because I was there. 

This Spotted Towhee was down near the end of the road. According to the book, the Eastern Towhee is uncommon (saw some of those too, but no usable photos) and the Spotted one is even rarer. Again, a pretty tight crop, he was far away. 

Carden Plain, or the Carden Alvar is not just about birds. This is Wylie Road about 5 or 6 km in. A charcoal sketch done with Topaz Impression. 

On my way out, I spotted this Kildeer. He was closer but flew off when I brought up the camera, so this distant shot was the best I could manage. Apparently there were Bobolinks in the same field but I couldn't spot them. 

Ron's Concept Shoot

As I said, I was really tired and couldn't buy into the concept shoot Ron (and Mark) were trying to achieve. A musician in the woods. Anyway, I did a couple of shots while we were there:

Wendy, Mark and Ron. 

Perhaps as Leonardo da Vinci might have envisioned it 

Stay tuned until next week! And just as a teaser,

— 30 —

What a weekend!

I spent the weekend shooting pictures with Linda Cresswell. I'm all tuckered out!

The original plan was for her to come up here and shoot trilliums and stuff but for one reason or another, we switched it up and I went down to the city. Linda lives just East of Toronto and we decided to shoot 4 or 5 different venues over the weekend. I'm nowhere near finished editing images but I can show you at least one from each site. More to come...

The Evergreen Brickworks
The first place we went was the old "Brickworks" just off the DVP at the Bayview Extension. If you are in the Toronto area or planning to be in the area, this is a MUST SEE even if you're not a photographer ... well I don't know how to describe it in a few words. There are a bunch of enterprises in there, all off-the-wall; the parklands rival most arboretums, there are hiking and bicycle trails, a farmer's market, a huge area where they cater to kids... visit their website: I can't describe it.

Linda took me into the first of many buildings. I would have been content to spend the entire day in that building. She dragged me to the outdoor kid's area. Like that character on "Friends", Oh–My–God! I didn't take as many pictures as I wanted to or could have, but I'll be back!

DIY Bike Space. One of the businesses in the Evergreen Brickworks is called Bike Works. Thomas, one of the owners, told me that the concept is to fix up and sell bikes, or rent them, or help people tune up their own bikes and even teach them how to maintain their machines. All profits go back into the shops at the Brickworks.

The Distillery District
Toronto's film industry has done a lot of movies in the Distillery District. Again an area comprised of old buildings, this has been turned into a tourist venue with restaurants, shops, art galleries, etc. This is higher end: everything here is expensive. Again I didn't take as many pictures as I'd have liked, but we did have a great espresso in a cafe, walked around and saw a bunch of places and Linda and I were even asked to be interviewed on a show being filmed for the Oprah network (we respectfully declined!)

Segway Rentals! You can even rent a Segway to cruise around the Distillery District (they're not street legal, though!). I think you can only go in groups, under supervision. That does look like fun!

Kensington Market
Everyone in the Kensington Market is weird. Linda and I were there, so by definition...

It was a zoo. By the time we got there, I was so tired and footsore, we didn't shoot much. We found a quiet unused patio and practiced our slow shutter speed/panning techniques.

Distracted Driver? I wonder if the law about using handheld devices applies when you're riding a bicycle! At least he was going the same way the traffic was (it was a one-way street) — most of the bikes and skateboards and other weird vehicles didn't care much.

Psychedelic Mural. I'm not sure, but I think the branches are actually painted on that wall, it's a trompe l'oeil. This person was so, shall we say 'stoned', she couldn't walk straight. The picture isn't blurry, she is!!!

Next we had a bite to eat in Chinatown (right there) and headed over to a spot I had scouted out as a good place to view the skyline.

CityScape at Dusk
I had a picture in mind. I wanted a shot of the Toronto skyline when night was just falling and the lights were on in the buildings. The spot we went to faced East. Had there been a good sunset, it might have been better to find one facing the other way, but it didn't matter. This is the bridge on Bathurst Street just south of Front Street (map).

We had to kill some time so found a Tim Horton's: did you know they're serving high end ice cream at some of their locations? You read it here first! Their double-double ice cream tastes like... a "double-double" (if you're not Canadian, you don't know what that is. OK, I'll help you out. Here). Anyway, we were at the bridge by about 7:15pm, just in time!

Toronto Skyline at Dusk. This is a 5-shot HDR, toned in Topaz. Suitable for canvas printing, a 20x30 would be good! Just in case you wondered if you could buy it... (link)

Another skyline shot. This is a longer time exposure, with a train going by on the tracks below. This HDR was processed with Nik HDR Efex Pro and toned further with Topaz Adjust 5. Exposures ranged from 1 sec. to 15 sec. The area where the train light is was blended in from one of the images. I said to Linda, "I feel like a Prairies farmer: praying for train". Finally, one started towards us from the downtown central station and I started the sequence.

Note: I had previously uploaded the wrong version of this image. Deleted and replaced with this one.

That was it for the day. We headed back to Ajax for a good night sleep and some relief for weary feet. Next morning, though we went to a completely different venue.

Thickson's Woods Nature Reserve
This is located in Whitby, Ontario and is a popular spot for birders and bird photographers (link). It's a marvellous place and I got to see and photograph some birds I've never seen in the wild. This is really difficult photography. Anyone who can do this well has my full respect.

Great Horned Owl. This fellow (a male, presumably because the female was with one of her chicks) was about 80' up in a tree and although it's a huge bird, about half a dozen people had to patiently tell me where it was and helped me to see it. I shot with my 400mm lens but you have to crank the ISO way up to get any kind of shutter speed. I don't know how they do it!

Cardinal. There aren't any cardinals up where I live, so I've never seen one in the wild. Another difficult 400mm shot. It took a lot of work to make this image sharp enough. 1/1250 sec at f/5.6, ISO 1250 in case you're interested.

Tree Swallow. Another tough shot, especially since it was the middle of the day and his eye was completely in shadow. I created the eye in Photoshop. Getting subjects in focus with the 400mm is not easy, I'm practicing for the moose trip in June (hey, that's exactly a month from today!) 

This was the most fun I've had shooting pictures in a long time. I'm definitely going back to all 5 of those venues. Next time, I may have some more pictures for you to look at, or at least I'll put them on my gallery and give you the link.

If you ever come to Toronto or can make it there to do some not-quite-tourist stuff, I highly recommend all of these venues.

— 30 —