Birds of North America – Page 11 – Circadianreflections Blog

Monochrome Madness 2 29/52 Peek-a-Boo!

October 20, 2015Posted in birding, Birds in the Wild, Birds of North America, Black and White Photography, Monochrome Madness2, Nikon Gear, Yellow-rumped WarblerTagged Birding, Birds, Birds in the Wild, Birds of North America, Black and White Photography, Monochrome Madness2, Nikon Gear, Yellow-rumped Warbler18 Comments

A shy Yellow-rumped Warbler that was so adorable! Taken while out birding last Saturday morning.

I think my old 300mm f4 is having auto-focus issues again. It has quit auto-focusing a few times lately, so I switched to my D700 camera to test the lens verses camera since my D300s is also long in the tooth I need to go through the process of elimination to be sure it’s the lens and not the camera. While shooting last Saturday my lens stopped auto-focusing, and suddenly my camera settings switched from f5.6 to f22! I turned the camera off and on again and all was well the rest of the morning. That’s a pretty good indication that it’s my lens. It’s pretty old now and was sent in to Nikon in January for auto-focus issues. I’m afraid it may be ready to go back for repairs again. Sadly, it’s not under warranty anymore. Sigh. Reality check! It may be time for a new lens.

My D300s’ flash doesn’t pop up anymore either, and it’s getting near 60,000 shutter clicks. I think it’s rated for 100K. My poor gear. I treat it really well, but use it a lot. I may have to retire my D300s too. That makes me a little sad. They’ve been such good company, and a huge part of my life for many years. Time to start saving big time for their replacements! 🙂

To see the other images posted for this week’s Monochrome Madness2 visit Leanne Cole’s site here.

Nikon 700| AF-S Nikkor 300mm f/4| SanDisk Pro Extreme Digital Film| CS6 & Silver Efex Pro| Tripod

More to come…

Lesser Goldfinch: Female

October 17, 2015October 19, 2015Posted in birding, Birds in the Wild, Birds of North America, Lesser Goldfinch, Santa Clara County BirdingTagged Birding, Birds in the Wild, Birds of North America, Lesser Goldfinch, Santa Clara County Birding, Winter Migration20 Comments

This morning I went back to the reserve where I went a couple of weeks ago; where I saw my first Yellow Warbler hoping to see it again only closer, and longer. I was seeing lots of Sparrows, and Yellow Rumped Warblers, the pair California Towhee’s were present, and so too was the Blue Jay, and a Northern Flicker flew in, but he kept his back to me only giving me side looks. Stuck up bird! 🙂

40 minutes after I arrived a yellow blur caught my eye and there it was! I quickly swung my rig around and fired off 3 rapid bursts. Then the bird was gone.

My first shot caught him landing and was so blurry it was unusable, the middle shot the bird was there, and the 3rd frame…no bird in it at all. I wouldn’t know for sure if I had a keeper image or not until I saw it on my computer. Though it did look promising in playback.

I didn’t see the Yellow Warbler again, and I stayed in the area until well after 9AM when it began to get busy with runners, dog walkers, and Saturday morning strollers.

He’s a beauty. I’ll be heading back over there again soon hoping to see him, and that Northern Flickr again.

Nikon D700| AF-S Nikkor 300mm f/4| SanDisk Extreme Pro Digital Film| CS6

More to come…

Addendum: It’s been brought to my attention that this isn’t a Yellow Warbler after all; it’s a Lesser Goldfinch Female. Thank you https://myrsbytes.wordpress.com/ !

I’ll keep trying to capture that Yellow Warbler, but I’m glad I saw and was able to make an image of this little beauty especially since she didn’t hang around long!

Yellow Warbler

September 27, 2015September 27, 2015Posted in birding, Birds, Birds in the Wild, Birds of North America, Santa Clara County, Warblers, Yellow WarblersTagged Birds in the Wild, Birds of North America, Migrating Birds, Santa Clara County, Yellow Warbler13 Comments

A new Bird added to my “life list”! This little bird was far away and high up in an Eucalyptus tree so, this is a deep crop and not as crisp as I want it to be. I hope to get out here again and get another crack at it for a closer look and better image.

Nikon Df| Nikkor 300mm f4| Hoodman STEEL Ultra High Speed Digital Film| Tripod| CS6

More to come…

This and That

June 7, 2015June 7, 2015Posted in Bachmann Trains, Backyard Birding, Birds, Birds of North America, Home Improvement, Macro Photography, Remodel, Toys, TrainsTagged Bachmann Trains, Birds, Birds of North America, Home Improvement, Macro photography, This and That, Trains7 Comments

The Feeder is busy again with House Finches. The females look like they’re molting, but the males are dazzling with their vibrant red heads.

The Black-capped Chick-a-dee makes daily appearances too, but I’ve not got a decent image of it so far this season.

The Mockingbird has a mate and they’ve been busy bullying anything they can. I caught one with a nice, fat bee last week. Since it didn’t eat it straight-away I’m guessing it went back to the nest with this meal.

A new visitor to my yard this year is a Black Phoebe. Isn’t he handsome?

The female Anna’s Hummingbird prefers the Lantana to the feeder this year so I try to catch her there when I’m out back. She’s lovely when the sun hits her back.

Here’s a macro image I created sometime ago that never made it to my Project 52. I used to set up this engine and a several cars around the Christmas Tree when my kids were little. It’s been buried in the garage for years, but I rediscovered it while cleaning out the garage. It’s a Bachmann Union Pacific Diesel Engine. Now that we have a little one (#1 Grandson) I’ll have to start setting it up again.

Speaking of the garage, that reminds me it’s been sometime since I talked about our remodel. It’s coming along very well. They’re right on schedule.

April 29th: Ground-breaking day. It was fun. We had a little digger in the front yard digging out the place for the foundation. #1 Grandson loved that! This is how the front of the house looked before the digger arrived-the foundation’s been planned out-

The digger

It's official. We have Ground-breaking! — It’s official. We have Ground-breaking!

A lot has happened between then and early June- The foundation was poured, the framing went up, and June 2nd this is how the house looked at the end of the day.

Adding a bedroom, and a small sitting/office area in the Master Bedroom.

Next week our new front door, and front windows will be installed, the plywood for the roof will be put on, and the following week they plan on breaking through the walls to the house so we need to move to other rooms while the work is being done.

There’s a lot of changes in the Master Bedroom, and bathroom that I’ll share in an upcoming post.

I’m feeling better. I hiked up the steep hill yesterday. It was tough! Probably more than I should have done since I’m still coughing and having sinus issues. What was I thinking? 🙂 Other than that it’s been a quite week-end.

I hope you all are having a great week-end!

Nikon Df| AF-S Nikkor 300mm f/4| Lensbaby Composer Pro| Hoodman STEEL Ultra High Speed Digital Film| Hand-held

More to come…

Clark’s Grebes Golden Hour Courtship Dance

May 27, 2015May 27, 2015Posted in Birds in the Wild, Birds of North America, Clark's Grebes, Clear Lake CA, Courtship Dance, Mating Rituals of BirdsTagged Birding, Birds in the Wild, Birds of North America, Clark's Grebes, Clear Lake CA, Courtship Dance, Courtship Dance in Golden Hour, Eyes of the Wild Boat Tours, Mating Rituals of Birds13 Comments

Daylight starts pretty early this time of year so we met our Boat Captain at 5:45am to get in as much morning light as possible. Soon we were sailing far out into the lake to find the Grebes. It wasn’t long before Faith our Captain spotted a large group and headed for them.

Twilight turned to Dawn then Golden Hour. We were very lucky to have been able to see this set of Clark’s Grebes dancing across the water with their breast mostly exposed to us during Golden hour. The warmth and color wasn’t like this for long.
Gosh, they were beautiful! This pair had a rather long run too.

Most the morning the Grebes danced away from us. Though Faith gave the Grebes plenty of space and room to dance our way they didn’t.
This was the very first dance we saw that morning. It turned out to be my favorite image. It happened so fast that I nearly missed it. Thankfully, Faith’s skill at spotting pairs that might dance, and her fast reflexes to get the boat in the right position she was able to alert us in time to catch this run.

Nikon D300s| AF-S Nikkor 300mm + Tamron 1.4x TC| Hand-held| Hoodman STEEL High Speed Digital Film| CS6

More to come…

Golden Crown Sparrow

May 15, 2015May 15, 2015Posted in birding, Birds in the Wild, Birds of North America, SparrowsTagged Bird Photography, Birds in the Wild, Birds of North America, Golden Crown Sparrow, Northern California, Sparrows6 Comments

I made this image last week-end early in the morning. It was quite overcast and gray most the day, and this little Sparrow was inside the canopy making the shot a bit tricky. Since my extender is broken and I still haven’t sent it in I was using my old D300s for the crop factor and I don’t like to take my ISO up any higher than 500 on that camera, so the bird was a bit dark.

I opened up the shadows and exposure a bit on the bird using the adjustment brush in Adobe’s Camera Raw after going through my normal white balance, camera, and lens calibration, and noise reduction settings in ACR. Then I opened the image in CS6 for resizing, added my watermark, and web sharpening.

Using Actions in CS6 to add the final touches this image took me less than 5 minutes to develop.

I like that! 🙂

Nikon Df| AF-S Nikkor 300mm| Hoodman STEEL Ultra High Speed Digital Film| CS6| Tripod

More to come…

On the Fence

February 23, 2015Posted in "Castle Rock Recreation Park", Bird Photography, birding, Birds of North America, Dark-eyed Junco, Goldfinch, Santa Clara County BirdingTagged Bird Photography, Birds in the Wild, Birds of North America, Dark-eyed Junco, Goldfinch, Santa Clara County18 Comments

Two images from Sunday morning. I was hoping to find Varied Thrushes, but didn’t find any this time.

A Goldfinch

A Dark-eyed Junco

Nikon D300s| AF-S Nikkor 300mm f/4 + AF-S Nikkor 14eII teleconverter| Hand-held| Lexar Professional 600x Speed Digital Film

More to come…

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