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Not too far from the Common Loon, this Red-throated Loon was diving and resurfacing.   I kept moving the car to try and anticipate where it would resurface – I call that The Game.   Finally it rested on the surface for a while, did a little preening, and flapped.   The sequence of the flapping was pretty nice, but I really liked the head-on look with the bill pointed straight at the camera.   Now I know what is the last thing an Anchovy sees!

The Aleutian Goose Festival in Crescent City, CA  www.aleutiangoosefestival.org is hands-down my FAVORITE bird festival in North America.   The Festival was founded to help protect the migration stopover of the Aleutian Goose, at that time a sub-species of Canada Goose that was on the Endangered Species List.    In subsequent years, the Aleutian Goose was removed from the Endangered Species List, and became reclassified as a member of the Cackling Goose species complex.  The geese are now doing fine.   I love the festival because the people are wonderful, the scenery is great, and the digiscoping opportunities are everywhere – seabirds, waterfowl, gulls, landbirds, even scenic shots and sunsets against the famous Crescent City Lighthouse.    Sometimes you have to wait a few days for good weather, but it is worth it!

1/320 sec @ ISO 800

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Another dark bird on an overcast day, placed against a gray background.   Now the dark head and the white breast are competing, and shooting the image in JPEG format limited the options I had for drawing out the details in both those extremes.    In hindsight, I probably should have switched to RAW format and slightly overexposed.   The bird’s face would have opened up some detail, and the details on the white breast could have been teased out in post-processing.

Shot from the car using the window mount at the Crescent City harbor.

The Aleutian Goose Festival in Crescent City, CA  www.aleutiangoosefestival.org is hands-down my FAVORITE bird festival in North America.   The Festival was founded to help protect the migration stopover of the Aleutian Goose, at that time a sub-species of Canada Goose that was on the Endangered Species List.    In subsequent years, the Aleutian Goose was removed from the Endangered Species List, and became reclassified as a member of the Cackling Goose species complex.  The geese are now doing fine.   I love the festival because the people are wonderful, the scenery is great, and the digiscoping opportunities are everywhere – seabirds, waterfowl, gulls, landbirds, even scenic shots and sunsets against the famous Crescent City Lighthouse.    Sometimes you have to wait a few days for good weather, but it is worth it!

1/320 sec @ ISO 800

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An all-black bird against a light background under overcast skies is a VERY challenging photo.   The camera’s light meter either sees too much of the background and turns the bird into a silhouette, while a spot-meter reading on the bird gives a gray bird with blown-out highlights that is tricky to touch up in post-processing.    Here is where you need to know your camera, how it reacts to these kind of situations, and how to set it up so you get the shot you want.  

This Raven was evidently hoping I would throw it a snack, so it allowed me to take a number of photos, checking the results on the camera’s LCD screen and blowing the image up to look at the details, the exposure, etc.    One good thing is that  it is standing on a white surface that is reflecting a little “fill light” to the bird’s undersides.    I really like the details on the head.

The Aleutian Goose Festival in Crescent City, CA  www.aleutiangoosefestival.org is hands-down my FAVORITE bird festival in North America.   The Festival was founded to help protect the migration stopover of the Aleutian Goose, at that time a sub-species of Canada Goose that was on the Endangered Species List.    In subsequent years, the Aleutian Goose was removed from the Endangered Species List, and became reclassified as a member of the Cackling Goose species complex.  The geese are now doing fine.   I love the festival because the people are wonderful, the scenery is great, and the digiscoping opportunities are everywhere – seabirds, waterfowl, gulls, landbirds, even scenic shots and sunsets against the famous Crescent City Lighthouse.    Sometimes you have to wait a few days for good weather, but it is worth it!

1/320 sec @ ISO 800

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A drizzly day in Crescent City, the waterfowl were not cooperating, so I parked over by the lighthouse and aimed the camera at the thicket of vines and blackberry canes.   A few squeaks and “pishhing” noises, and up came the Fox Sparrow.    These West-coast Foxes are very different-looking than our Eastern birds, showing darker colors and more grays.  Still, they are very handsome birds.

The Aleutian Goose Festival in Crescent City, CA  www.aleutiangoosefestival.org is hands-down my FAVORITE bird festival in North America.   The Festival was founded to help protect the migration stopover of the Aleutian Goose, at that time a sub-species of Canada Goose that was on the Endangered Species List.    In subsequent years, the Aleutian Goose was removed from the Endangered Species List, and became reclassified as a member of the Cackling Goose species complex.  The geese are now doing fine.   I love the festival because the people are wonderful, the scenery is great, and the digiscoping opportunities are everywhere – seabirds, waterfowl, gulls, landbirds, even scenic shots and sunsets against the famous Crescent City Lighthouse.    Sometimes you have to wait a few days for good weather, but it is worth it!

1/200 sec @ ISO 800

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Yes, I know, this is the third Orange-crowned picture I have put into CD 1000!   Well, I kept getting better shots.    This also illustrates the process of taking nature photos – yesterday’s masterpiece can be bettered tomorrow.    The light had become pretty poor, and I was about ready to quit when the warbler hopped up into the flowering fruit tree and struck a pose.   I got it focused and took a sequence of five shots – frame 5 was only flowers and no bird.   Frame 3 was this one.   The composition and exposure is exactly the way it came out of the camera, all I did was slide the contrast a little higher.   I really LIKE this photo!

More bird feeder shots, again from my car using the scope on the car window mount.  This time I am in Rogue River, OR, in late March, and the cool air combined with the warm sun and the blacktop driveway to create some wicked heat shimmer (“heat haze” to those in the UK) that occasionally made sharp images impossible, even at distances of less than 50 feet!   The fruit trees were blooming, and I waited for birds to use a scenic perch.

1/100 sec @ ISO 800

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The western races of Lesser Goldfinch tend to have green-backed males, while the ones I see at my feeder in TX are the black-backed type.   This one was in Oregon, but one of these days I hope to see a similar one at my house in TX.   You can see how narrow the depth of field is with digiscoping – the wooden feeder that the bird is standing on only has a tiny bit of it in focus.    Since the bird is angled slightly toward me, its tail is badly out of focus.   That’s OK, since the viewer’s eye is always drawn to the head and eye, so make sure those are in focus when you take the picture.   I will rock the focus back and forth a few times to make sure I have it the way I want it.

Notice the shutter speed – under a bright overcast sky, that’s a tough speed to get sharp images when shooting at these magnifications.    Fire the camera in bursts, and at least one will likely come out better than the others.

More bird feeder shots, again from my car using the scope on the car window mount.  This time I am in Rogue River, OR, in late March, and the cool air combined with the warm sun and the blacktop driveway to create some wicked heat shimmer (“heat haze” to those in the UK) that occasionally made sharp images impossible, even at distances of less than 50 feet!   The fruit trees were blooming, and I waited for birds to use a scenic perch.

1/50 sec @ ISO 800

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Now, THIS ONE gets a lot of “WOW”s!    It is one of my favorite digiscoping shots to date.

We were in Kalmath Falls itself, and there was a flock of Ring-billed Gulls hanging around the edge of the river.  The gulls were in spectacular breeding plumage – bright white feathers, bill and soft parts brilliantly colored, and they were strutting and showing off for each other.   I maneuvered the car up close, framed tightly, and started shooting.   To be honest, had I been far enough away to get full-body photos, the background of buildings and parking lot was pretty uninspiring, so the closer shooting distance helped to minimize the distractions.

Expose for the white feathers to show contour, but don’t lose the saturation of the bill and eye ring.   Since the birds were not going anywhere, I was able to review my exposures and make sure that I had what I wanted.

1/1250 sec @ ISO 800

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Just a few hundred yards down from the snipe, there was a flock of “Speckle-bellies” both on the water and up on the grassy bank.   The light was coming from a decent angle, but I struggled with framing and the way the birds were composed.    It was pretty annoying, especially since the swimmers were relatively unconcerned with our presence, just slowly drifting away from me.   I settled for this image, cropped it to make a “centered, profile, ID photo”, darkened the midtones and bumped the contrast slightly.   Not a bad photo, but certainly now a “Wow!”

Klamath NWR http://www.fws.gov/klamathbasinrefuges/lowerklamath/lowerklamath.html  near Klamath Falls, OR, is a great place for birding and digiscoping, especially in winter and early spring, when the wintering waterfowl and raptors are less spooky.   I use the car as a rolling blind, shooting with the scope on the car window mount.   The tricky part is keeping the birds and the light on the correct side of the car.    Always have the scope ready before you slowly move closer, stopping frequently to shoot photos as you approach.   They do not always let you get close, but often enough to make for a fun day.

1/800 sec @ ISO 800

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This one is a pure digiscope “grab shot”.   I spotted a bird along the edge of the marsh, pulled up and stopped the car, slipped the scope and window mount into place and shot half a dozen photos of the snipe “hiding in plain sight”.    After a few seconds it came to its senses and scuttled into the reeds.   Metering was straight forward, no additional zoom was used.   I suppose I could crop this one, placing the bird to the right, facing into the center of the frame with the grasses filling in the left side.  

Klamath NWR http://www.fws.gov/klamathbasinrefuges/lowerklamath/lowerklamath.html  near Klamath Falls, OR, is a great place for birding and digiscoping, especially in winter and early spring, when the wintering waterfowl and raptors are less spooky.   I use the car as a rolling blind, shooting with the scope on the car window mount.   The tricky part is keeping the birds and the light on the correct side of the car.    Always have the scope ready before you slowly move closer, stopping frequently to shoot photos as you approach.   They do not always let you get close, but often enough to make for a fun day.

1/800 sec @ ISO 800

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As we drove around the refuge looking at the ducks and geese, there were a few swans at long distance.   We found a nearer one, but the light was not great – coming from the right and backlit.   Ugh.   The swan was swimming left, away from the light, placing the front of the bird in shadow.   Double Ugh.   It did stop and look my way, giving some direct light on the side of the face, and illuminating the yellow spot at the base of the bill.  I tried to expose for the face, letting the upper back wash out, the shadowed areas did not lose detail, and the contours of the head and neck came out fine.   A great photo?   No.   However, given the lighting, a decent photo where the bird can certainly be identified to species, and one that has at least a little personality.   I was then going to work on composition with the background waterfowl in a little nicer positions when it turned and swam directly away.   End of photo session!

Klamath NWR http://www.fws.gov/klamathbasinrefuges/lowerklamath/lowerklamath.html  near Klamath Falls, OR, is a great place for birding and digiscoping, especially in winter and early spring, when the wintering waterfowl and raptors are less spooky.   I use the car as a rolling blind, shooting with the scope on the car window mount.   The tricky part is keeping the birds and the light on the correct side of the car.    Always have the scope ready before you slowly move closer, stopping frequently to shoot photos as you approach.   They do not always let you get close, but often enough to make for a fun day.

1/3200 sec @ ISO 800