Phil Jeffrey's Bird Photography

Dickcissel

2011-12-29T08:05:00.000-08:00

Common in the south, Dickcissel is very much a rarity in the north east and can usually be found hanging out with House Sparrows, with whom they are superficially related. This individual was hanging out with a large flock of House Sparrows - 30 or so, at the edge of ball fields at Inwood Hill Park. It was a very skittish flock - perhaps the fence line they were at is a favorite hunting spot for Accipiters, because they rarely spent more than 30 seconds on the ground feeding at any one time.

This bird is a first winter male, aged by the narrow dark streaking on the breast (immature), tapered primaries that don't show in this photo (immature) and the quite extensive yellow on the breast (male). Immatures tend to be the ones to wander - adults much less frequently.

Rufous Hummingbird in NYC

2011-12-27T05:55:00.001-08:00

Every few years a Rufous Hummingbird turns up in/around NYC, and this year is one of them. There have been a lot of Rufous in the general region this late fall, and this is certainly an unusually late one.

It was feeding on a remaining patch of flowers outside the American Museum of Natural History Planetarium entrance on the north side of the building with no direct sun. There's no flash used in this image - this is actually from sunlight reflected off a nearby building on the north side of W81st Street. It's an immature female - various tail-spread shots (see the one I added below) are pretty definitive for both age and species and allow separation from the very similar Allen's Hummingbird (yet to be placed on the NY State bird list despite a Central Park example of Allen's in 2002).

Sadly the prospects for this bird are not good - it's lacking in energy and often clings to plants while feeding. It's doubtful it has the ability to migrate south far enough to find more flowering plants, so this will likely be its final stop.

Unusual Ruddy Turnstone

2011-12-27T05:49:00.000-08:00

In the lower image the typical appearance of winter-plumaged Ruddy Turnstone is in the lower left-hand corner. A Purple Sandpiper is in the middle, and this rather atypical Ruddy is at the top right. The top image shows what it looks when it's walking around feeding - demonstrably a Ruddy Turnstone but with no paler rufous fringing and a very extensive breast mark. Although Ruddy Turnstone and Black Turnstone overlap in breeding range in Alaska there's actually nothing in this bird to indicate a Black Turnstone hybrid - it's just a very dark Ruddy and one that really stuck out from all the other 40+ Ruddies that were roosting on the side of Barnegat Inlet jetty. I've considered melanism (or some other color defect) as a possible explanation - it's interesting that at least in the "group" photo the legs are noticeably a darker shade than the other Turnstone.

EOS-1D X - notsomuch

2011-10-18T09:11:00.000-07:00

I'm underwhelmed by the announced 1D X that Canon says will be available as of March 2012. (Nice summary by Rob Galbraith's site). Basically it's an 18 mpix full frame fast-firing pro camera with lots of video extras and rather substantial redesign (again!) of the AF system amongst other things. Given my experience of the 1D III and 1D IV AF performance is less than totally stellar, I reserve judgement and enthusiasm on that part.

Most significant for me is the pixels. There are more pixels than the 1D IV, but it's 18 vs 16 and the move to full frame means that the pixels are larger on the chip. This is great for noise - it should certainly decrease, but pixel density decreases over both the 1Ds III (21 mpix, full frame) and the 1D IV (equivalent density to 27 mpix full frame). Since my wildlife photography is almost always pixel-density limited I'm not going to drop $6K to have the number of pixels on my subject drop by 1/3. That's a very large number and enough to offset any improvements that may be under the hood.

This is probably a recognition that Canon have reached the upper limits of signal/noise for their current chip technology so the only way to lower noise is to drop pixel density. It's going to be very interesting to see where they go with the 5D Mark II and 7D successors - in the latter case the 7D noise level is too high for my taste, but since it has a pixel density equivalent to 46 mpix full frame it can afford to lose 1/4 of them and still be a very interesting upgrade over what I'm getting on the 1D IV.

Upside: this leaves extra cash to consider the new 600/4L II (which is about the same size/weight as my 500/4L).

R.I.P. Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T06:45:00.000-07:00

All my digital photography processing has been done on a Mac - a succession of G4, G5 Power Macs and iBooks, and intel MacBook, MacBook Pro and iMac. I do research in structural biology using Apple's underlying Unix operating system (open Terminal.app and see what I mean). I have the inevitable iPod (music and image backup while traveling) and iPhones. I'm writing this on my Mac Pro octacore at work. I also owned a NeXT, once upon a time.

So it was appropriate that last night I found out about the very sad news of Steve Jobs death from a NYTimes alert read on my iMac. While not the only visionary in technology he was the most iconic, and it is so sad to lose him this soon. For those of us that remember Apple's darkest days when it was perilously close to bankrupcy (e.g. Wired's "Pray" cover - shown here), Apple's ascendency in the second Steve Jobs era was nothing short of breathtaking. Pray that it continues.

Addendum: Jobs has, in ways small and large, altered the ways I have done things and reacted to technology. The iPhone is iconic and much impersonated because it is both functional and beautiful in ways that enhance using it. However his vision, will and force of personality is also conveyed in the ideas and products he created. That why I had an emotional response to his death, like many other people. However I'm not sure he is someone I would have liked to work closely with - the other aspect to his character, which also made him effective, is nicely illustrated by this piece on him at the PDN site. If you read that, and also his 2005 Stanford commencement address, you get a sense of just how singular a person he was.

Gray-hooded Gull

2011-08-05T13:23:00.001-07:00

This is (ostensibly) the second U.S.A. record of Gray-headed Gull (Chroicocephalus cirrocephalus) and only the third for North America. Other records were Florida in 1998, Barbados in 2009. Contrary to it's extreme rarity status it's wandering around on the heavily used beach at Coney Island, Brooklyn, NYC. Since this is not a prime birding spot it was found by chance and it took a little while for the word to get out. Since then it's fair to assume that hundreds of people have seen it and probably hundreds more are hoping to. It goes by the name Grey-headed Gull outside the AOU area.

These pictures are from August 2nd.

AOU 52nd Supplement

2011-07-27T12:13:00.000-07:00

Although this is mostly a birding issue, I like to tag my photos with scientific names and common names. In this "splitting" climate for the records committees it can be quite consuming to keep up with things.

Witness the contents of the AOU 52nd supplement, readable at http://www.aou.org/auk/content/128/3/0600-0613.pdf .

Modest changes are:
Split Common Gallinule (Gallinula galeata) from Common Moorhen (Gallinula chloropus)
Split Snowy Plover (Charadrius nivosus) from Kentish/Snowy Plover (Charadrius alexandrinus)
Internal split in Mexican Jay makes it become (Aphelocoma wollweberi)

But the greatest mayhem is in the New World Warblers, where DNA evidence has led to a widespread rearrangement of the genera. While this is pretty much justified some people are going to have a hard time with the disappearance of Dendroica, for example, which turns into Setophaga. Hooded Warbler leaves Wilsonia and heads into Setophaga, Ovenbird breaks from the Waterthrushes (which become Parkesia) etc etc etc. That should only take a few tens of hours to sort out.....

And another....

2011-07-21T13:35:00.000-07:00

The Dennisville saltmarsh Seaside Sparrows seem to be rather further along in nesting than the Great Bay Boulevard ones, at least judging by the number of adults bombing around the marsh and very few singing. This adult was not all that happy I was even in the parking lot, which is why it paused on a phragmites stem to check me out before heading off to the nest.

Seaside Sparrow

2011-07-18T13:26:00.000-07:00

Adult Seaside Sparrow, Great Bay Boulevard Wildlife Management Area, Tuckerton NJ. Of course there's no shortage of Seaside Sparrows in the coastal saltmarshes of NJ although they aren't always as cooperative as this individual which perched roadside for me. While not singing, I suspect it's a male since it's really on the males that perch up like this. With its gray and olive plumage and often bedraggled appearance it's a bird best appreciated in its subtlety.

Juvenile Barn Swallow getting fed

2011-07-12T07:27:00.000-07:00

Being in the right place at the right time, I was watching this juv Barn Swallow when the parents started feeding it. This is one of the benefits of the 1D IV - this action is happening way too fast to time the shot (much less than 1 second for the entire exchange), so I put the ISO up to 400 and when the adult bird came in I just leaned on the shutter and let the 10 fps deal with the rest. After a little while I went on my way to avoid stressing the juvenile. It was quite capable of flight, since I saw it make a couple of its own loop flights before returning to another phragmites stalk.

Brigantine division of Forsythe NWR, Sunday, using the car as a blind on the auto tour route.

OR-WA trip: California Quail

2011-07-08T09:16:00.001-07:00

California and Gambel's Quails have this strange compulsion to perch up on objects, possibly to survey their territory. This male was sitting roadside on some man-made object early in the morning in Wenas Valley (near Yakima, WA, on the eastern edge of the Cascades range). Not the most natural of perches but a fabulously ornate plumage with that head plume. Now if only Mountain Quail were as cooperative.....

LA-TX trip: Willet

2011-07-08T09:08:00.000-07:00

An annoyed Willet (Eastern ssp) over the boardwalk at Sabine NWR in Louisiana. This was on a little side-trip prior to a work conference in New Orleans whose main focus was Bachman's Sparrow and Red-cockaded Woodpecker. The boardwalk passed through fairly typical marshland habitat for an Eastern Willet - it also held Seaside Sparrow - although by this point it's getting close to the edge of this Willet subspecies range. I didn't see a nest or juveniles although since these adults were hovering above me there's no doubt there were some nearby.

Late spring: Grasshopper Sparrow

2011-07-08T09:03:00.000-07:00

Spring migration didn't produce an epic flood of photos, and I was between two trips (LA-TX, mainly work with a little birding; OR-WA, birding and photography) when I ventured out into Franklin Twp to check the grasslands. I found this male Grasshopper Sparrow perched up singing away - although not a tall shrub it was the tallest one in the field and this was obviously a frequent singing perch (see the whitewash) from which this male was singing for an extended period.

Summer Tanager

2011-05-10T13:19:00.000-07:00

Summer Tanager is a fairly rare "overshoot" species in Central Park, since the breeding range is entirely to the south and south-west of NYC. Sometimes the birds travel a little too far - in fact judging from multiple sightings within the park and around NYC this has been a big year for overshoots. This is a first spring male - it has substantial elements of adult male plumage but the primaries are still green from the original first fall plumage. I actually saw another first spring male Summer Tanager about a week later, making this an exceptional spring for them, and the only year that I've ever seen two in NYC. Most years I don't see any.

This individual was "fly"catching bees in the oaks on the south side of Turtle Pond, giving excellent views to those who stopped to watch.

Cape May Warbler

2011-05-10T13:17:00.001-07:00

I tracked this male down by its unobtrusive singing, and it was kind enough to pose for a few photos before it wandered off. In the last few years Cape Mays have been rather less uncommon than have been the case historically, although it's not clear what is causing the trend. Nevertheless an adult male in full alternate plumage is a striking sight.

Blue-winged Warbler

2011-05-03T14:38:00.001-07:00

Another male warbler, this time Blue-winged Warbler. A little bit of yellowish veiling on the wing bars and the somewhat pointed tail feathers make me think that it's a first year bird. It's also perhaps a notch below the very yellowest Blue-winged that one encounters in spring. It was pretty vocal. This photo was taken around the same time as the Blackburnian Warbler shot in the previous post.

Blackburnian Warbler

2011-05-03T14:35:00.001-07:00

An adult male. April 30th (rather early for a day with multiple singing Blackburnians).

Glaucous Gull

2011-03-28T07:29:00.000-07:00

First winter (or perhaps given the late date, better to say "first cycle") Glaucous Gull in rather worn plumage, taken on an NJ pelagic. Although in this case we were very much inshore, perhaps only a mile or three off the coast. The mass of the bird is rather well shown in this instance - chunky body, broad wings, but the tail is in all sorts of disrepair. However the size of the bird wasn't appreciably greater than the multitude of Herring Gulls.

This pelagic was not at all productive for actual pelagic species, but having a Glaucous Gull soar over my head was a decent consolation prize. Other gulls included two Icelands (the immature was the more cooperative of the two) and two Lesser Black-backed.

Painted Bunting

2011-03-24T13:00:00.000-07:00

In contrast to the drab Eastern Phoebe this male Painted Bunting is positively lurid. This was taken on the same FL trip, but in West Palm Beach.

Eastern Phoebe

2011-03-24T12:56:00.000-07:00

Adult Eastern Phoebe, Everglades National Park. Eastern Phoebes are one of those species whose most hardy incarnations turn up in March in NYC, but more typically opt for a more luxurious winter in the balmier climates of FL and southern TX. This is an adult (as evidenced by tail feather shape, since these get replaced in fall). I've seen Phoebe fledgelings as early as the 3rd week in May, so their hardiness translates to an early start to the breeding season.

Short-tailed Hawk in flight

2011-03-15T09:58:00.001-07:00

Pale morph Short-tailed Hawk, apparently an immature based on plumage pattern around the head. There don't seem to be reliable population estimates for Short-tailed Hawk, but the FL population is isolated and probably not all that large. It's also easily overlooked - superficially similar to immature Red-tailed Hawk - quite a few birders don't recognize Short-tailed when they see them, even along Anhinga Trail which is one of the most reliable places to see them in the winter. This bird was circling fairly low over me as it took off from near the Anhinga Trail visitor center at 9am. I saw a total of two pale morph and one dark morph at Anhinga over multiple visits, and one more dark morph at Shark Valley for a total of four on my recent FL trip. In FL the dark morph predominates in the population.

Snail Kite in flight

2011-03-15T09:55:00.001-07:00

This is an immature male Snail Kite that I watched hunting at Loxahatchee NWR in western Boynton Beach in FL, at the north-eastern edge of the Everglades. This is about as close as I'd ever come to a Snail Kite as it made regular hunting forays over the wetlands and picked up snails. Snail Kites have highly hooked bills that enable them to work with snails. This individual is banded.

Roseate Spoonbill

2011-03-14T08:41:00.000-07:00

Adult in flight at Paurotis Pond in Everglades National Park. The Roseates were nesting amongst a colony of Wood Storks.

American Wigeon

2011-02-25T08:14:00.001-08:00

And to complete a hat-trick of duck photos, this male American Wigeon was also taken in TX at South Padre Island, just a lone individual mixed in with the Redheads.

Redhead

2011-02-25T08:09:00.001-08:00

Adult male Redhead, South Padre Island, TX. January 2011. Southern TX is a major wintering spot for Redhead, with thousands of the birds locally - although you can find a few Redhead on open freshwater throughout the northeast. This bird was in relatively shallow water in the early morning off the Convention Center boardwalk at South Padre Island in a group of 50+ Redheads with a few other ducks mixed in. Now if only I can find Canvasbacks that are this cooperative...

Harlequin Duck

2011-02-25T08:04:00.000-08:00

Taking pictures of Harlequin Ducks at Barnegat Inlet in NJ is sort of cheating, because this has to be about the easiest place ever to shoot them. In winter through early spring there are perhaps as many as 30 individuals here, and since they are used to seeing people rock-hop along the breakwater they are moderately tame. So it's not particularly difficult to come up with pictures of them and over the years I have taken many thousands. In fact perhaps the biggest technical challenge is that the adult males are especially high contrast birds, so on a sunny day it's tough not to burn out the white markings while keeping detail in the darker blues.

Long-billed Curlew

2011-02-11T08:17:00.001-08:00

This was also taken at Laguna Atascosa NWR in January (see the Caracara shot), but back in 2010 on an overcast day. What redeems the shot is the contrast of the yellow foliage with the rich buff of the Curlew. This was shot with my 5D Mark II back in the days before I bought the 1D Mark IV, but the image quality between the two cameras is similar - it's just that the 5D2 has a lot harder time acquiring focus in dark conditions on a mobile subject.

How do I hate thee Adobe ? Let me count the ways

2011-02-10T11:14:00.000-08:00

Every time I see Adobe praising itself over features or design of its products, I wonder if anyone buys into that pile of horsesh*t, or if I'm the only one experiencing issues with Lightroom. Lightroom has a decent UI design, but the underlying code in it does some supremely stupid things at times. I have LR set to write the sidecar files upon modification, and if I start changing the photo location, a favorite thing for LR to do is to interrupt my typing into the next text field (e.g. city) while saving the contents of another location field. It likes to do that by dropping the input focus from the text box and making the characters I've already typed correspond to commands in either the Grid view of the Develop view. Sometimes it'll just drop characters, which is at least less random. Since LR knows I'm typing into the text box, it chooses to ignore that when doing the UI update.

But I don't expect that bug will ever be fixed. Adobe's focus is on hype.

Apparently it's not just me, because I encountered a rant about Photoshop CS5 that is rather analogous to my experiences with Lightroom (which is still young, and therefore rather harder for Adobe to screw up quite as comprehensively).

Enjoy: http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2010/11/cs5.html

I work in academia and get Photoshop (I use CS4) and Lightroom on the cheap. I'd be a lot more angry if I have to buy that sort of crap software engineering at street prices.

Alternative ways that Adobe tries to mess with you ? See the Scott Kelby blog about their new "upgrade" policy.

Yet Another Oriole - Audubon's

2011-02-10T09:32:00.000-08:00

Audubon's Oriole is - for me at least - one of the main attractions of the Salineno feeders, since it's relatively hard to come up with elsewhere. In the Rio Grande Valley I only remember seeing one at the San Ygnacio feeders, back when they were maintained. On this visit to Salineno the Audubon's were as active as I think I've ever seen them, and particularly enthusiastic about the oranges put out.

Altamira Oriole

2011-02-07T08:04:00.000-08:00

Keeping with the oriole theme, these are two male Altamira Orioles seen during my recent TX trip. Both these shots were at the Salineno feeders maintained by Cheryl Longton. The feeders have all three species of oriole (Hooded, Audubon's, Altamira) and are by far the most reliable place to see Audubon's in the Rio Grande Valley. Altamira is, however, the most widespread - and largest - RGV oriole and not especially difficult to find at many locations (e.g. Bentsen SP in Mission or Frontera Audubon in Weslaco or Laguna Atascosa NWR out toward South Padre Island). They're also the most numerous at these feeders and by the looks of things these are two different adult males.

Black-vented Oriole

2011-02-07T08:01:00.001-08:00

This was taken while the bird was feeding on a Coral Bean tree at the Bentsen RV Park (although it was also seen in the neighboring state park). This is the 9th US record for this species. I only got a few shots of this bird in otherwise good lighting, due in large part to a bird "photographer" literally dragging his rattling metal tripod around in front of this bird to change viewpoint. The downside of digital SLRs and viable telephoto lenses is that every tom, dick and moron then runs up and chases birds. It was more civilized in the days of film, where it was a tougher prospect and helped keep the idiot level down.

The 600mm shrinks

2011-02-07T07:54:00.001-08:00

I've carried the Canon 500mm f4L-IS in preference to the bigger/heavier/more expensive 600mm telephoto for some time. I use it in Central Park and like it in particular for its short minimum focus distance. Now Canon have formally announced the successor to both the 500mm and 600mm supertelephotos:

http://www.dpreview.com/news/1102/11020709canon500mm600mm.asp

and the first thing I noticed is what I suspected might happen - the new 600mm has become as light as the old 500mm and has the same minimum focus distances as the old 500mm. Of course this new 600mm will be very expensive for a while even after it hits the streets, but it is going to be a very attractive lens. In the meanwhile I think I'll try using the 800mm plus extension tubes and see how that goes, although the 800mm will be too large a magnification for some of the bigger species of birds at it's minimum focus distance.

Spec for the old 500mm is here:
http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/consumer/products/cameras/ef_lens_lineup/ef_500mm_f_4l_is_usm#Specifications

An unanticipated problem with Vermilion

2011-02-02T09:51:00.000-08:00

Vermilion Flycatcher males are so intensely red they positively glow in the sun, which ultimately led me to have a very big problem with getting a decent image of them. Basically the red channel saturates and blocks up quite quickly, especially in situations with a lot of contrast between the sunlit head and the shaded breast, like the above. And once the red saturates too far Lightroom (and probably most other RAW processors) map the overexposed red to white. I did a little bit of masking on the head to get around this problem (which otherwise makes the bird look glossy).

The other thing I noticed is an apparent reduced level of detail compared to what I was expecting. This probably has a lot to do with the saturation of the red color in the first place, but I'm not sure if the Bayer sensor (which is RGGB, and therefore may be less accurate with pure reds and blues than it is with greens) had a role to play in this too. Ironically, I got better feather detail from shots in more overcast conditions than I got in sunlight. But with Vermilion Flycatcher I will take what I can get - they do not seem that willing to let me approach them very much, and they are quite a small bird.

Orange-crowned Warbler

2011-02-01T08:34:00.001-08:00

Orange-crowned Warblers apparently have a sweet tooth. While I saw lots of Orange-crowned and Yellow-rumped down in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas recently, it was the Orange-crowned visiting the grapefruit, oranges, nectar feeders and these bottle brush plants at the convention center at South Padre Island. Yellow-rumped seemed fonder of peanut butter. This bird is probably a first winter immature (flight feathers not seen well).

Crested Caracara

2011-02-01T08:29:00.001-08:00

Crested Caracaras usually watch me long enough to stop the car and then exit the scene. This undoubtedly reflects the tendency of bozos to shoot at them. So of course this especially tame adult at Laguna Atascosa NWR in Texas was actually a little too close for my 800mm lens, and I couldn't quite cram all of it in the frame. Nevertheless the amount of resolved detail in the full-size image is startling (not so obvious in a smaller JPG like this).

Dunlin

2010-12-29T09:04:00.001-08:00

A basic plumaged individual resting on rocks at Barnegat Inlet in NJ

Northern Mockingbird immature

2010-12-15T08:55:00.001-08:00

This Northern Mockingbird that was one of several at Cove Island Park in CT on my second visit to the Fork-tailed Flycatcher. Mockingbirds were harassing the FTFL quite a lot that day - I've had a persistent problem with winter-territorial mockingbirds in my back yard as they can be quite belligerent. This individual was a little tamer and often this is seen with immature birds. Correspondingly the somewhat sharper tail feather profile suggests first winter age, as does the gray iris. Pyle's ID book warns that eye color is not definitive and that some adults can show green or even gray, but in this case it's nicely consistent with the tail profile. This bird is also a little browner than most around the throat and shows quite a bit of yellow in the gape.

Hermit Warbler

2010-12-09T10:34:00.000-08:00

The first Hermit Warbler on the NY state list, this first fall female was at Sunken Meadow State Park on Long Island, spending most of its time feeding on the grass. The previous bird, in 2002, was judged to be a Townsend's X Hermit hybrid.

White-throated Sparrow

2010-12-07T08:33:00.001-08:00

This popped up in some colorful foliage while I was waiting for a Varied Thrush to be more cooperative. At the time the lighting was overcast, which made for subdued lighting with strong saturation. I believe this is an immature based on the flank streaking, rather than an adult tan stripe morph. Shot with an 800mm f5.6/L-IS on a 1D Mark IV.

Fork-tailed Flycatcher showing yellow crown stripe

2010-11-30T13:06:00.000-08:00

This is another picture of the Fork-tailed Flycatcher in Stamford CT from my second visit to the Cove Island Park site. I particularly like this picture because of the yellow crown stripe - I think many Tyrant flycatchers have this sort of thing, including Eastern Kingbird and Couch's Kingbird from my personal experience - but like an Orange-crowned Warbler or Ruby-crowned Kinglet it's usually hidden. The FTFL was being harassed by Mockingbirds on this morning, and a couple of times had flared the yellow crown patch out of irritation, and in this photo it still shows partially (it's larger than this in display) even though it's not being chased by Mockingbirds right at this moment.

Loggerhead Shrike immature

2010-11-22T07:58:00.001-08:00

The bottom shot gives a sense of how windy it was at Jones Beach SP when I took these photos, although it wasn't that cold and compared to conditions Northern Shrike is found in in winter it's probably not especially challenging. The faint barring on the breast indicates a first winter bird, which after all are the individuals that tend to come south the furthest during winter.

Update: careful reconsideration of the ID by many birders has ended up with the consensus being strongly tilted towards an atypical Loggerhead Shrike, as opposed to an atypical Northern Shrike.

Fork-tailed Flycatcher

2010-11-22T07:56:00.001-08:00

Some of the first images shot in anger with the new 800mm lens, which worked out well. Of course, any day when you can take pictures of a vagrant Fork-tailed Flycatcher with any hardware at all is a good one. I haven't figured out age/race yet although from the bluntness of the primaries I'm leaning toward adult, perhaps female. This bird was a multi-day special in Stamford CT.

Ring-billed Gull

2010-11-09T07:49:00.001-08:00

Ring-billed Gull, at a feeding frenzy at a sluice at Brigantine division of Forsythe NWR. This is a first winter immature as indicated by the scapular contrast, the brown markings in the mantle feathers and the solidly dark distal half of the bill. I think it's just yawning.

This was during my first field test of my new 800mm f5.6L-IS lens.

Prothonotary Warbler

2010-10-27T10:11:00.001-07:00

This is the immature male Prothonotary that has apparently been in Bryant Park outside the NY Public Library for 2-3 weeks. Almost certainly a "wrong way" fall migrant, given that NYC is north of the traditional known breeding range. Prothonotary is very rare as a fall migrant through NYC for precisely this reason - there's no population north of us.

Eastern Bluebird

2010-10-22T09:48:00.001-07:00

One of a roving flock of Eastern Bluebirds that were milling around the parking lot at Griggstown Preserve. Most of them had no intention of getting anywhere near me, but after standing still and quiet for a while they started to worry about me less. This male came in relatively close while foraging, albeit for a short period of time. It's vocalizing quietly here - the flock itself was quite vocal.

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

2010-10-21T05:08:00.000-07:00

First fall immature, Central Park, Oct 8th.
These birds are hyperactive, so most of my images of Ruby-crowned have a dubious level of blur about them. It's a borderline nemesis bird for that reason, especially for a relatively common species. Golden-crowned Kinglet and Wilson's Warbler have the same challenges - they never pause, especially in migration when they are looking for food after flying all night. The odds were enhanced in this case by it being a sunny day, so a higher shutter speed helped. And also a large amount of luck.

Immature White-crowned Sparrow

2010-10-20T13:02:00.001-07:00

Sometimes aging a bird is as easy as identifying it - this first fall immature White-crowned Sparrow being a case in point. This was found on an otherwise relatively quiet Saturday morning in Central Park. With the park the usual challenge is snatching opportunities between dog walkers, tourists and joggers - in this instance I gave up photographing at this spot when two tour groups turned up, although the two White-crowned Sparrows that were here actually were relatively tame.

Palm Warbler

2010-10-14T08:25:00.000-07:00

First fall immature Palm Warbler, of the "Yellow" Palm subspecies hyphochrysea, at Griggstown Preserve in NJ in October 2008 (before they mowed the Hell out of the place).

Hermit Thrush

2010-10-07T08:04:00.000-07:00

Probably a first fall immature based on the buff edges to the coverts.

Swainson's Thrush

2010-10-07T08:03:00.001-07:00

Red-eyed Vireo

2010-09-28T04:45:00.000-07:00

First fall immature (as judged by eye color)

Gray-cheeked Thrush, Sept 11th

2010-09-24T14:42:00.000-07:00

Although I identified it at the time as a Gray-cheeked Thrush it subsequently caused me a few problems when I started to look at it more carefully on the computer screen. Mainly that its bill was pink on the lower mandible - until just recently I had assumed that Gray-cheeked had a yellow lower mandible, where the yellow was restricted to less than 50% of the extent. It seems like I was wrong there, and looking back through my old images of Gray-cheeked I see that some of them have pink on the bill.

The bird above is a relatively cold coloration bird, predominantly olive, with a minimal eye ring and no buffy in the face or lores. There's quite a lot of gray-olive wash on the flanks, no contrast between tail and primaries. The lack of eye ring and buffy lores eliminates Swainson's - and it's usually fairly prominent even on the drabbest Swainson's. Wrong coloration for Veery (and too much spotting).

So what we have is a relatively small Gray-cheeked - it was slightly smaller than nearby Swainson's Thrushes - on the olive end of gray. It could well be the minimus subspecies rather than the aliciae subspecies, not least of all because the latter should be a littler larger than Swainson's. Either way it's not C. bicknelli (Bicknell's Thrush) because of bill color, lower mandible color extent and the lack of rufous on wings on tail. However it looks rather like Bicknell's in basic structure. It's also a first fall immature bird, based on both the buffy terminal spots on the coverts and the pointed tail feathers.

Molting Icterids

2010-08-31T13:06:00.000-07:00

Blackbirds are notorious for looking absurdly messy at this time of the year, losing large chunks of tail and body feathers as they undergo prebasic molt into non-breeding plumage. Blackbird flocks are often quite shy, but this bird popped up long enough to grab a few shots. It's in very active molt with most body feathers freshly replaced, except the head which is just starting to molt. That's why the neck looks odd. The tail feathers are heavily worn adult feathers - very frayed at the ends. On the wings the secondaries are fresh and clean, but some primaries are still adult and yet to be molted in.

All sorts of things are going on with the plumage of this bird. That's one of the things that photography has improved my appreciation of - aging and sexing birds by feather age and structure, as opposed to just plumage color. This picture was taken on August 28th 2010 at the Brigantine Division of Forsythe NWR.

In this case it's not too difficult, since we can easily age the older feathers by fraying. (An alternative would be by shape since juvenile feathers are more pointed). Since they are heavily frayed in August this bird must be an adult (a bird born this past summer would not have this level of wear - it's feathers would be in good condition). The tail feathers in particular are very heavily worn. They are also brown, so these adult feathers belong to a female - the vast majority of birds molt flight feathers once, each fall, so these feathers are about a year old.

Over on the wing, there's a mix of fresh feathers and worn ones. The secondaries and some of the primaries appear to have been replaced, with at least one worn primary left from last year's molt. Ducks replace all their primaries at once, rendering them flightless for a while, but most other birds including passerines replace feathers in a more controlled stepwise approach.

And there you have it - not the prettiest bird in the freshest of plumage, but it speaks volumes about molt strategies.

There is also a difference in primary shape between the more pointed older feather and the more rounded new ones. This might be a difference between definitive basic and juvenile flight feathers (i.e. this bird is a little more than 1 year old), or this might just be a difference in feather structure due to position.

Update: on Sept 6th at Brigantine at least some Red-winged Blackbirds appeared mostly tailless, suggesting that their retrices were in active molt.

Juvenile Semipalmated Sandpiper

2010-08-24T13:02:00.000-07:00

Nothing too special to say about this juvenile Semipalmated Sandpiper except that it's shots like this that make it worth crawling in the mud to get down close to bird eye level, covered in goose sh*t and bitten by Horse Flies. The bad days are when you get nothing at all, but it's often feast or famine at Jamaica Bay with a lot of random mixing of shorebirds. By the end of August juveniles are relatively common (this was taken Sept 1st 2008 at 7am) but they are quite scarce earlier in the season.

Update: this year I doubt I will be so lucky - recent rains have filled up the East Pond at Jamaica Bay leaving relatively little exposed mud as per birder reports. Some years this happens in early September, some years much later, but it's an unusual year for it to occur in August. The green "grass" here requires a few hot weeks of exposed mud to develop, so it won't be as lush as previous years and photo ops will be highly limited. The situation probably isn't enhanced by the laissez-faire attitude of the reserve staff on lowering water levels in recent years.

Juvenile Northern Mockingbird

2010-08-24T12:22:00.000-07:00

You would think that since Northern Mockingbird is a widely dispersed common species that I'd have more photos of it. But apparently not. On a quiet day at Six Mile Run this was one of the few cooperative birds, and responded to my "spishing" by popping up and seeing what the hell was making that noise. I try not to lure young birds - in particular there was a quite recent Field Sparrow fledgling that I came across just after taking the picture above. I walked away from it rather than pursuing a picture because it was so very young (very short tail, weak flight) and I didn't want to stress it. Similarly the male Blue Grosbeak that I saw seemed somewhat agitated with frequent contact calling so I didn't approach it. That sort of behavior often reflects a predator response in the presence of young birds. This is how I act all the time - the birds are more important than my pictures of them - but all the more important that morning because a fast-moving adult female Cooper's Hawk was hunting the same area. Juveniles and first winter birds are often a little tamer anyway, so I prefer to wait for them to provide the opportunities rather than push them.

Common Tern

2010-08-05T13:06:00.000-07:00

Common Terns are coastal beach nesters whereas Forster's Terns nest in the saltmarsh. Accordingly at Brigantine there are a ton of Forster's Terns although the colony doesn't seem to be on the NWR - the fish-bearing adults headed out toward Brigantine Island. Common Terns are much less common yet I really have no problem finding them on trips at high tide. They like to hang out on one of the sluices, and I've seen up to 4 (usually it's one or two). That means there's perhaps a hundred more times Forster's than Common's, but nevertheless neither species is particularly annoyed by my presence - they're concentrating on the fish, or the Commons are ritually harassing the slimmer Forster's.

Other beach nesters that aren't too hard to find at Brigantine NWR are American Oystercatcher and Black Skimmer, although in both cases the numbers of these are relatively low too.

Osprey, Forsythe (Brigantine) NWR

2010-08-05T13:01:00.000-07:00

There's an Osprey nest not far from the loop drive at Brigantine that's easy to photograph in morning light and the birds are accustomed to cars - not sure about people since I always shoot using mine as a "blind". Often both adults will be lounging around, but in this instance the (presumed female) made several flights into the marsh to pick up nesting material to work back into the nest, perhaps refreshing it after the accumulation of detritus. Both adults are far more agitated by fly-by Ospreys than they are by the cars, and in some cases it's not really clear why the other adults are doing such close fly-bys of an active nest. Surely Ospreys don't predate each other's nests ? There was a lot of vocalization but no actual direct confrontation.

Card speed in the 1D Mark IV

2010-08-04T14:58:00.000-07:00

Recently my camera buffer filled up when I was shooting picture of Willet in flight. Needless to say that sort of thing really didn't happen very often with the sluggish 5D Mark II, but the 1D Mark IV is a different beast. Since Rob Galbraith appears to have slowed down or stopped updating his CF card database I'd become curious which were my faster and slower cards in my new 1D Mark IV and got a surprise. I did a test where I shot the camera until the buffer filled, and counted how long it took to empty the buffer (the red write light goes out). All cards were Sandisk.

CF Extreme 60 Mb/s 16 Gb - 9 secs - this card bought in 2010
CF Extreme IV 4 Gb - 12 secs
CF Extreme III 8 Gb - 16 secs
SD Extreme III 8 Gb - 24 secs
CF Extreme III 4 Gb - 24 secs

My cards are an "evolved" mix of different ages, so the older CF III 4Gb is several years old, the other cards one to three years old. Even with the same labeling the Sandisk cards have different speeds depending on their age. With the 1D Mark III the SD cards were comparable with the CF cards because the CF slot lacked UDMA compatibility, which was only introduced with the 1Ds Mark III. However the 1D4 has UDMA so the CF cards have become relatively a lot faster. At some point you do hit the speed limit in the camera card slot itself, of course.

The speed ratings from Sandisk's own truly unfriendly website show this story too:
CF Extreme Pro are 90 Mb/sec
CF Extreme are 60 Mb/sec
CF Extreme III and Ultra are 30 Mb/sec
SDHC Extremes are 30 Mb/sec in some versions
SDHC Ultra are 15 Mb/sec

These are current models, some of which seem to come in various grades, but the upshot is that Sandisk's very fastest CF cards are three times faster (!) than their fastest SD cards. The B+H site appears to be one of the better ones for surveying various CF and SD card rated speeds and their price points.

Slashgear tested CF cards in the 1D4 and show that you can get a 1D4 to write at 57 Mb/sec onto a card rated at 90 Mb/sec. That's slightly more than 3 images a second. It seems there's no point in buying an Extreme Pro card for speed - I'm getting roughly that speed with my regular Extreme - we've reached the inherent speed of the 1D4 card slot. Slashgear either didn't realize that or only had the fast cards to test. In their companion piece on SD cards, they get about 20 Mb/sec over all cards, which is around 1.2 images a second. Since the 1D4 usually fills the buffer with 33-34 images, the 24 seconds it takes my existing SD card to clear is pretty much par for the course. No room for improvement there.

Willow Flycatcher

2010-06-08T18:47:00.000-07:00

These are (probably) two different male Willow Flycatchers in two adjacent territories from two successive years at a local grassland preserve. Most of the Willow Flycatchers I encounter are not very friendly, but sometimes you find an especially hormonal one that is perhaps still looking for a mate. The one from 2009 kept shuttling between bush tops proclaiming territory and eventually briefly stopped in a position when I could take a photo. The one from 2010 was a much more assertive bird - in fact at one point I wasn't sure that it wasn't singing at me - and it may or may not be associated with it being in more marginal territory with less cover. The 2010 male has fewer perches and is considerably less shy in singing from them. It's almost certainly unpaired, although I don't monitor breeding success in this location. There are at least two other Willow Flycatcher territories in this general area, and they are by no means a rare bird in the right habitat in NJ.

Impact

2010-06-03T13:36:00.001-07:00

Some days I feel the urge to delete the entire list I run (eBirdsNYC) because birders and particular bird photographers are so fond of wandering around stressing birds without apparent thought to the consequences.

Case in point:
http://www.naturescapes.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=178344
This bird is obviously taped in. In an area where the (isolated) population is declining. So much for restraint. But this is so totally in line with my experience of a significant subset of bird photographers.

After posting about this particular thread to JerseyBirds I was sent a couple of links with inflammatory blog post titles:
http://xenogere.com/2010/01/21/the-birding-community-hates-birds-pishing-and-tape-luring-part-1/
http://xenogere.com/2010/01/28/the-birding-community-hates-birds-pishing-and-tape-luring-part-2/

Reading the blog postings with my science pro hat on I see a lot of talk about "effects" and little about magnitude. Unfortunately despite the fact that I'm prone to agree with the bias of the blogger about the deleterious effects of routine or excessive taping it still falls back on anecdote and opinion and lacks hard data. Of course any bona fide ornithologist is unlikely to get funded much for that sort of study (and even less in generating the sort of publications needed to advance one's career).

Still it's pretty damn obvious that we're not a neutral effect out there, and we should behave accordingly.

Canon 1D Mark IV first experiences

2010-05-25T12:49:00.001-07:00

Although I'm currently running at the rate of one expensive DSLR a year - a farcical renewal rate - I finally took the plunge and got the new 1D Mark IV (1D4) in early May. Since it saw only limited service the first weekend I didn't get a feel for the camera until a couple of weekends later. It goes without saying that the camera is fast, but from the AF point of view and also in terms of overall handling and motor drive speed. In line with the 1D Mark III it's more difficult to take single shots with this camera. Not impossible, but it requires attention.

But what about the image quality ? In pixels/mm² this outranks my previous favorite - the 5D Mark II - by 27.2 full-frame equivalent pixels to 21.0 megapixels. This is around the same margin that the 5D2 bested the 1D3 (21 vs 17.1) but of course the 1D series tends to have a heavier aliasing filter. And so it is: eye-balling of the pictures suggests that for wildlife the 1D4 has around the same image quality as the 5D2, at best very slightly better. This is no bad thing, since the 5D2 produces very nice images.

Noise on the 5D2 still seems to be a little lower than the 1D Mark IV - perhaps the natural trade-off between pixel size and noise hasn't been overridden by technology advances this time. But the new Lightroom 3 beta 2 has a quite effective noise reduction filter that largely renders the difference moot. While I'd not choose the 1D4 over the 5D2 for low light landscape work, for wildlife work the fast AF on the 1D4 and the APS-H crop factor wins out in most circumstances.

Gotchas: the AF is a little cranky, since with the left-right AF assist points set and using the center focus points it liked to grab the background rather than the subject; the video option is buried in the menus unlike with the 5D2 where I can go into Live View and into Video mode with two button pushes.

Brewster's Warbler, Stirling Forest

2010-05-25T12:40:00.001-07:00

This adult male "Brewster's Warbler" was apparently unpaired and by far the most vocal Vermivora warbler in this part of Stirling Forest. I've hardly ever seen a Brewster's, much less photographed one, so this was a special start to my day. Brewster's are Golden-winged X Blue-winged Warbler hybrids, and in fact may be back-crosses with Golden-winged. As hybrids they display quite a range of variation but they tend to be grayer, with little yellow but lacking the black throat and mask of Golden-winged. It's not difficult to see the Blue-winged heritage in this bird either.

While this is a spectacular bird its mere existence speaks to an ongoing micro-tragedy: that of the slow extirpation of Golden-winged Warbler in the NYC metro area because of the introgression of Blue-winged Warbler into the gene pool. In this competition the more numerous Blue-winged always seems to win (Lawrence's Warbler is the other side of the hybrid appearance spectrum). NJ now has no strongholds of Golden-winged Warbler, although Stirling Forest (NY) is still pretty good for Golden-winged. The nearby Old Mine Rd (NY) Golden-winged population appears primed to succumb to the local Blue-winged Warblers.

Prairie Warbler, Stirling Forest, May 22nd

2010-05-25T12:36:00.000-07:00

Adult male Prairie Warblers, alternate plumage. This was at a scrubby area in Stirling Forest. Prairies don't seem to be all that fearful since several tee'd up to sing territorially whenever they saw me. This particular spot appeared to be at the boundary of at least two territories and the birds were so busy defending territories and attracting mates that they essentially ignored me.

Prothonotary Warbler, April 29th 2010

2010-04-30T13:43:00.001-07:00

This male Prothonotary Warbler bucked the usual trend with this classic migrant-overshoot species by singing pretty actively for several days in a row. It even foraged high in the canopy at times, although it usually favored a somewhat lower aspect in the denser wooded areas near the Weather Station. Mostly unconcerned about birders it often came in fairly close, almost invariably hidden by leaves given the early leaf-out in the canopy this year. Nevertheless I snagged a couple of shots.

Tree Swallow, April 2009

2010-04-28T14:03:00.000-07:00

These are from almost exactly a year ago, on a sunny morning at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge en route to some business on Long Island. Under the right conditions Tree Swallows can be relatively trusting, particularly before they've settled down into nesting, and these pictures were part of a series of about 50 of some accommodating birds.

Palm Warbler, NYC, April 24th

2010-04-25T10:22:00.001-07:00

This adult male Palm Warbler (Eastern race, the "Yellow Palm") was singing at Hernshead in Central Park on a sunny Saturday morning. In fact there were multiple Palm Warblers at this location. Despite unfavorable overnight winds for migration Palm, Yellow-rumped and Ruby-crowned Kinglet were present in OK numbers, and I racked up a total of 6 warblers on that particular day. Overall numbers were kind of low, so the Palm Warblers were the only ones I took photos of.

Long-tailed Duck

2010-03-30T10:40:00.001-07:00

Adult male in basic plumage with just the faintest hint of pre-alternate molt. March 27th 2010 at Barnegat Inlet in NJ. A fairly fresh northerly wind that day making the rock jetty too treacherous (and bird-free) to walk out on very far. This was shot from the concrete walkway. The wind has obvious disadvantages - this bird was bobbing around a lot so the number of sharp images was low. However the advantage is that it blew its long tail up out of the water. The bird was actively feeding - you can see how the wings are held a little away from the body in readiness for diving.

Iceland Gull, Sandy Hook, Feb 10th 2010

2010-03-09T13:53:00.001-08:00

This was my first - and so far only - Iceland Gull for 2010, a first winter immature on the bay shore outside the SHBO location. Not overly tame, it nevertheless came close enough to take a shot at after I waited quietly for a while. The downsampled image on here looks a lot softer than the full-size one you'll see if you click on the image. The mostly dark bill (not bicolored) and the patterning on the mantle feathers are pretty strong indicators for this being a first year, which I think is the age of the vast majority of Iceland Gulls I've seen in the NYC-NJ area in winter.

1D Mark IV review

2010-02-22T14:54:00.000-08:00

Dpreview.com actually got their act together and reviewed the 1D Mark IV. Dpreview's strong suit is a careful itemization of the features and doing resolution/noise/dynamic range tests. They are largely useless for analysis of how good the autofocus performance is. They didn't manage to review the 1D Mark III, which was somewhat of a stunning omission.

And the conclusions ? The 1D4 is a good camera, images are better than the 1D3, but not quite as much of an improvement as it might have been expected given the increased pixel count. Noise levels at high ISO are pretty good compared to the 1D3. Image resolution is better than the 1D3 but worse than the 5D2. Absolute resolution values from their tests are 2500 lph for the 1D4 and 2700-2800 5D2, 2200 for the 1D3. Sharpened/processed images from RAW appear comparable between the 7D and 1D4, but the latter clearly contain more "pop" in terms of color. There was quite a clear visual difference in sharpness between the 1D3 and 5D2 in both my tests and my general shooting images, but the gap would be very much narrowed with this camera. The Nikon D700 and D3S resolutions are around the same as the 1D3.

Link: dpreview's 1D Mark IV review
and 5d Mark II review for reference.

Expletive deleted

2010-02-12T13:44:00.001-08:00

As a "proud" owner of an EOS-1D Mark III I've had some interesting, amusing and downright farcical moments dealing with the autofocus on that camera. I have said that the 1D3 acquires focus faster than any other Canon, but that it acquires AF on the background faster than any other Canon. My relatively ancient Mark II works better for birds in flight since it makes a stab at tracking a Northern Harrier in flight rather than focusing on the treeline faster than a weasel on crystal meth, which is the strong point of the Mark III.

So I had great hopes for the 1D Mark IV since you couldn't imagine Canon messing it all up again. After all, the IV is their flagship SLR body, their ultimate photojournalist machine, and I was starting to look forward to retiring the Mark III and getting a Mark IV or Mark IVs to replace it with.

Imagine, then, my joy at reading this article:
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-10048-10484 ;

which suggests that the 1DIV is really just a different breed of cranky to the 1DIII. Somebody just shoot me now. (I actually started checking out Nikon 600mm f4 VRs this afternoon). The 5D2 is sluggish, the 7D is soft, and the 1DIV is cranky. Is there someone in Canon Japan that I should visit to slap some sense into them ?

For what it's worth, I have no doubt that Galbraith's mammoth article reviewing the AF performance on the Mark III:
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-8740-9068
was right on the money. Roger knows how to point a camera and engage autofocus - he does it for a living, unlike us dilettantes. The 1D3 certainly has its moments but after being somewhat burned on that SLR I'm rather reluctant to drop $5K on another turkey. (The 1D3 focuses just fine on Wild Turkeys, just so long as they aren't moving that fast).

Looks like I'm using the 5D2 again this spring.

Texas - Least Grebe

2010-01-22T05:57:00.001-08:00

Least Grebe, from the boardwalk at Estero Llano SP. This one is in basic plumage - ones that I had shot at Sabal Palm as late as Thanksgiving were in alternate plumage. The boardwalk is completely exposed, so only the tamer birds are going to tolerate you here. The puffing up of the rump feathers appears to increase as the bird gets ready to dive - is it expanding its body to store more air before it does ? Other interesting behavior was watching one of these follow a Northern Shoveler and diving into it's "wake" to feed amongst the things it kicked up. I saw this more than once, so it was a conscious bit of opportunism.

Texas - Green Kingfisher

2010-01-22T05:44:00.000-08:00

Green Kingfisher at Estero Llano Grande State Park. This was actually photographed from the covered section at the visitor center, so this kingfisher was pretty tame. The only complication was finding the keyhole shot between the obscuring branches. Now that Sabal Palm Preserve in Brownsville is closed off behind the border fence, Estero Llano is taking over as my favorite place to photograph in the Rio Grande Valley. Usual combo of 5D Mark II, 500mm/4L, 1.4x teleconverter and the relatively flimsy Gitzo 1258 that I use when I travel.

At one point Green Kingfisher was my "nemesis bird" - I had looked for it quite a few times and never saw it. I nearly always see multiple birds on winter RGV trips these days.

7D fubar?

2010-01-11T08:46:00.000-08:00

And after getting excited about the 7D the other shoe has now formally dropped. It's pretty clear that much of that extra pixellage is wasted with a strong aliasing filter. This is well-illustrated by looking at the DIII/DIV/7D/5D2 comparison down the page at:

http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/Canon-EOS-1D-Mark-IV-Digital-SLR-Camera-Review.aspx

Which shows that the 7D is far noisier, and quite a bit softer than the 5D Mark II (unless you ramp up the sharpening, presumably). The 1DIV looks like it might be a little noisier than the 5D2, and perhaps not quite as much raw sharpness, but the results are close.

The results are in line with Darwin Wigget's review of the 7D so there's no reason to think they are erroneous.

Since the tests are done at the same focal length, the sharpness of the characters is a good match for the intrinsic sharpness feather detail would be in the final image. The 7D falls short by a decent margin, especially over the 5D2. The only upside to this is that the high cost of the 1D IV looks a little better if I don't buy the 7D as well - there's no point me getting a camera that has substantially worse image performance than my current one.

I'm also interested in what/if Canon will announce for the 1Ds IV. Although $8K-ish is a lot of money for an SLR, compared to $5K-ish for an SLR that isn't as sharp as the one I even own (1D4) it would look rather more compelling if it did resolve more than my 5D2.

Northern Bobwhite

2009-11-24T09:59:00.001-08:00

Northern Bobwhite, adult male, TX in April

I was on a ranch in Raymondsville TX looking for Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl when a small covey of Bobwhites dropped into the feeder. In NJ (where I've seen precisely one) the birds are skittish but they were obviously not feeling threatened and used to the human activity in this area. They weren't totally tame, and sped up as they walked past me. I ended up lying on the grass shooting the quail hand-held with the 1D Mark III as they wandered past me or fed on grain. This is always a little more exciting in a region that has fire ants, but I got away with it this time.

Short-billed Dowitcher

2009-10-22T10:22:00.000-07:00

Juvenile, NYC in September

This is a classic juvenile Short-billed Dowitcher shot from a low angle (lying in the mud) at Jamaica Bay WR toward sunset. This was shot with the digital Rebel XTi, which doesn't always produce exceptional images but does well on well-lit subjects at low ISO.

Wilson's Phalarope

2009-10-22T10:21:00.000-07:00

Tests on 5D Mark II settings

2009-10-13T10:12:00.000-07:00

Prompted by discussions with a friend concerning his new 7D I did the following tests on my 5D Mark II :

1. Default Picture Code settings do not affect RAW file appearance in Lightroom. Not a great surprise this, since RAW files are supposed to evade most or all processing policies that effect in-camera JPG files. I shot an IT8 target with RAW+JPEG. Of interest was that there was some difference in color reproduction in the reds between "Faithful" and "Neutral" in the JPGs.

2. High ISO Noise Reduction settings do affect RAW appearance. This test was shot against a defocussed white wall (i.e. "featureless" image) at 2 stops underexposure at ISO 1600. There was a marked difference in appearance of the JPG files, with much less evident grain in Standard and Strong settings than at Low or Disabled. Standard was fairly close to Strong. This pattern was also evident in file sizes (more noise = larger files). For the RAW files there was a subtle difference for the same shots - more or less invisible for the lower ISO (400?) that I tested the previous evening but just visible at ISO 1600. I did not test sharpness reduction, but that's the usual trade-off. Canon, however, in this document, indicate that Adobe Camera Raw ignores this setting.

3. Noise patterns at all ISOs. Everything from 100 to 3200 in 1/3 stop increments with the same -2 stop underexposure as the previous test. Notably, stops 1/3 below the "standard" ones showed less noise, but also a little more exposure. In fact for ISO 160 the featureless noise shots perhaps showed nicer noise appearance than ISO 100. The 5D Mark II has this tendency to produce grid noise artifacts at lower ISOs. The ISO 1/3 stop above the standard ones fared least well. This pattern has been commented on previously at the Dpreview.com forums, and despite the high bs level much of the content in those forums, it appears to have a basis in fact.

Central Park, October 6th

2009-10-13T08:29:00.000-07:00

Black-throated Blue Warbler (first fall male)

Scarlet Tanager (first fall male - notice the molt limits in the coverts)

Sora

2009-10-02T09:01:00.001-07:00

DeKorte Park, Lyndhurst, Sept 26th 2009

More megapixel obsessions

2009-09-03T08:23:00.000-07:00

Starting this May I largely stopped using the professional level EOS-1D Mark 3 and have subsequently mostly used the EOS-5D Mark 2. The autofocus performance of the latter is quite a lot worse, particularly in flight, but I had found that the images were noticeably sharper in some instances and generally had more "pop". I still use the 1D3 for flight shots.

I process RAW in Lightroom so in principle things will be normalized but there is a real difference in image quality. The 5D2 has many more pixels (21.1 Mpix vs 10.1), and more per square mm since the 1D3 pixel density is equivalent to 10.1*1.3*1.3 = 17.1 Mpix. The factor of 1.3 comes in because the APS-H sensor on the 1D3 is smaller than the full frame 5D2. The 5D2 appears to be sharper even on a per-pixel basis probably because of a weaker aliasing filter.

Enter the newly-announced Canon 7D which is the common APS-C sensor size (1.6x crop factor) and 18 Mpix. Running the numbers the 7D pixel density is equivalent to 17.9*1.6*1.6 = 45.8 Mpix on a full frame size. No, that's not a typo. It has twice the pixel density of the 5D2 and almost 3x that of the 1D3. You can't ignore that.

There will be the usual concerns about noise level at higher ISOs, and how much actual sharpness you can realize off any lens combination. If you shoot the 17-40/4L wide open the actual resolution of the lens is worse than that of the chip. However the supertelephotos that I use have a lot of inherent sharpness. Some of that sharpness is lost when using the 1.4x teleconverter - it's not difficult to see that in test shots but I can also see it in real life photos in the rare situations when I get to take the 1.4x off.

Which brings me to the thing that most excites me about the 7D - thinking about the number of megapixels on the subject using different lens combinations. This is the same thing as considering pixel density, but adding in a factor for focal length conversion. The equation normalized to full frame is pretty simple:

Effective pixels = Mpix * chip-factor * chip-factor * focal-length-factor * focal-length-factor

Chip factors are 1.0 for the 5D2, 1.3 for APS-H like 1D3, 1.6 for APS-C like 7D. Focal length factor is normalized (i.e. 1.0) to a 700mm f5.6 which is what I use with the 500mm/f4L + 1.4x. (Edit: updated for a 16 mpix APS-H EOS-1D Mark IV, aka 1D4).

These are in Mpix on a "subject" of the same nominal size, so bigger = better.

	1D3	1D4	5D2	7D
500mm	8.7	13.9	10.8	23.4
600mm	12.6	20.2	15.5	33.6
500+1.4x	17.1	27.4	21.1	45.8
800mm	22.3	35.7	27.5	59.8
600+1.4x	24.6	39.4	30.3	66.0

The absolute #s are not relevant because you couldn't image a subject with that many Mpix on it, but the relative numbers hold. I could shoot with the bare 500mm f4 on the 7D and have more pixels on a subject than the same subject with the 500mm+1.4x on the 5D2. Depending on how much these lens combinations outresolve the 7D sensor, and issues with the aliasing filter, the 7D could resolve as much as twice as much detail as the 5D2 for telephoto-type subjects where the subject does not fill the frame. The 5D2 still wins for landscape subjects where the 1.6x crop factor on the 7D kills the widest focal length one can achieve.

Apart from sharpness the wider apertures of bare lenses w/o teleconverters allow lower ISOs or faster shutter speeds to be used in dark conditions. As the analysis indicates it's worth taking a very hard look at this camera for bird subjects because there might be a substantial effective resolution gain. Remains to be proven, however, as many factors can come into play to degrade image quality.

Update: the general vibe on the Dpreview forums is that the 7D has lower image quality than the 5D Mark II - this not really being a surprise since it was packing nearly as many pixels into a far fewer chip. It also has less latitude for overexposure (perhaps as much as a stop). It seems there is still no free lunch for smaller pixels. Since the 1D Mark IV has smaller pixels than the 5D Mark II, it will be interesting to see comparative reviews of the latest 1D series increment.

Red-necked Phalarope, Jamaica Bay WR

2009-08-27T21:47:00.000-07:00

Pretty much the only thing I photographed in a relatively brief visit to the East Pond ahead of two days of scheduled rain. This is an adult in basic plumage.

Upland Sandpiper

2009-06-22T10:00:00.000-07:00

Sheyenne National Grasslands in the vicinity of the Nature Conservancy's Brown Ranch, ND. I think this swath of wetland was actually owned by the Nature Conservancy.

Say's Phoebe

2009-06-20T11:09:00.000-07:00

Theodore Roosevelt National Park, south unit, Medora ND

Lark Bunting, WY

2009-06-19T09:53:00.000-07:00

Male Lark Bunting at Thunder Basin National Grassland, Wyoming, June 2009

Dusky Grouse

2009-06-18T09:56:00.000-07:00

Dusky Grouse (formerly Blue Grouse) at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, June 2009. This rather tame male was sheltering from the periodic drizzle under an evergreen at dawn, but also singing with a series of almost inaudibly low-frequency hoots. In dark conditions this was taken without the teleconverter at ISO 1600 at something absurd like 1/30th at f4. Nevertheless only required only moderate work with Noise Ninja to get a decent result.

Gray Jay

2009-06-16T10:04:00.000-07:00

Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming, to the east of Yellowstone National Park and to the west of Beartooth Pass.

Black Rosy-Finch

2009-06-15T10:10:00.000-07:00

Adult Black Rosy-Finch in breeding plumage, feeding on a snow field at the east (MT) side of the eastern summit of Beartooth Pass. There were about 30 of them milling around. The following morning there were none here or anywhere along Beartooth Highway.

Mountain Bluebird

2009-06-15T09:50:00.000-07:00

The male of a fairly cooperative pair at Makoshika State Park at Glendive, MT on the MN-ND-WY trip.

Nelson's Sharp-tailed Sparrow

2009-06-14T10:12:00.000-07:00

They are never supposed to be this cooperative, but this adult male Nelson's Sharp-tailed Sparrow (now called Nelson's Sparrow) was singing on the reed-covered fence line at Lostwood National Wildlife Refuge. Probably helped that at the time there were two males there, so competition for this small piece of habitat was relatively fierce.

Brewer's Blackbird

2009-06-13T11:02:00.000-07:00

One of the few cooperative ones from the MN-ND-WY trip, roadside at Lords Lake National Wildlife Refuge near Bottineau, ND

Yellow-headed Blackbird

2009-06-12T11:05:00.000-07:00

Displaying male Yellow-headed Blackbird, Sheyenne National Grasslands, ND

Mourning Warbler

2009-06-11T11:33:00.000-07:00

Adult male, alternate plumage, MN in June 2009

Barn Swallow

2009-06-11T11:06:00.000-07:00

Sheyenne National Grasslands, ND

Willow Flycatcher

2009-05-30T11:59:00.000-07:00

Adult male Willow Flycatcher, Franklin Twp, NJ in May. Several areas in Franklin hold them, at least in part because Franklin Twp makes some effort to keep a fair amount of open space. Some of these grasslands are invaluable for declining birds like Grasshopper Sparrow and Bobolink, although Willow Flycatcher is a little more versatile and not under quite so much pressure as those two specialists.

Golden-winged Warbler

2009-05-19T12:02:00.000-07:00

Adult male, NY in May. Rapidly declining under the twin pressure of habitat loss and hybridization with the more dominant Blue-winged Warbler, there are still a few pockets of this species to be found in the north-east.

Bay-breasted Warbler

2009-04-26T12:05:00.000-07:00

Very early but not totally unprecedented, this adult male Bay-breasted Warbler was seen on April 26th in Central Park. This species is more commonly associated with being found in the warbler weather of May 10th or later.

Yellow-throated Warbler

2009-04-12T12:35:00.000-07:00

Adult male (possibly first spring), alternate plumage, Central Park

Canon hits the wall ?

2008-11-05T13:11:00.000-08:00

The most recent review of the Canon 50D by dpreview.com suggests that the successor to the 40D hasn't eked much more resolution out of the images than its predecessor.

Ever since the introduction of the first "prosumer" digital SLR with the D30, Canon have done an epic job of increasing pixel count (and therefore resolution) of this line of cameras while keeping the noise level down:

D30, 3.1 megapixel, 10.1 micron pixels, [full-frame 7.9 mpix]
D60, 6.3 megapixel, 7.4 micron pixels, [full-frame 16.1 mpix]
10D, 6.3 megapixel, 7.4 micron pixels, [full-frame 16.1 mpix]
20D, 8.2 megapixel, 6.5 micron pixels, [full-frame 21.0 mpix]
30D, 8.2 megapixel, 6.5 micron pixels, [full-frame 21.0 mpix]
40D, 10.1 megapixel, 5.7 micron pixels, [full-frame 25.9 mpix]
50D, 15.1 megapixel, 4.7 micron pixels, [full-frame 38.7 mpix]

(all the chip sizes are essentially identical for this series of cameras)
The full-frame values are what you'd get in a full-35mm-size chip of the same pixel density.

The review suggest that both resolution and noise levels on the 50D are no better (or, in the case of noise level, worse than) the 40D. Have we finally hit the limitations of resolution with these Bayer matrix sensors ?

And for those who are wondering why I care: here's an explanation.
To oversimplify: pixel density is more relevant for telephoto shooters, while the total number of pixels is more relevant for people that can fill the frame with their subject.

Harris's Sparrow

2008-11-01T12:42:00.000-07:00

Vagrant Harris's Sparrow at Brandywine Creek State Park in Delaware.

Canon 800mm f5.6

2008-09-03T13:39:00.000-07:00

For a modest $11,599 + tax B+H is willing to sell you a Canon EF 800mm f5.6L IS

Despite the price tag it's quite a tempting lens. For one thing it's also a lot lighter than the 600mm f4L IS lens, while being around the same size (9.9 lbs vs 11.8 lbs), has an intrinsic focal length close to the 600mm + 1.4x teleconverter, and will be shockingly sharp without the converter or be an 1,040mm f8 lens with it.

Downside ? The minimum focus distance is 19.7 ft, so that's an 0.14x magnification at the closest range. The values for the 600mm f4 are 18.2 ft and 0.12x. So while you get a little extra magnification at closest distance you need to step back about a foot and a half. Of course, if you never get to within 20 feet of your subject this point is largely moot and the 800mm looks like an excellent option, modulo the price.

See Canon's own comparison between 500/4, 600/4 and 800/5.6.