High ISO – Circadianreflections Blog

Friday’s Feathered Friends-Golden-crowned Sparrow

January 26, 2024January 24, 2024Posted in Birding in Nevada, Friday's Feathered Friends, Nikon, PhotographyTagged Birding, Birds in the Wild, Golden Crown Sparrow, Gray cloudy Day, High ISO, Male Birds, Nature, Nikon, Sparrows, Willow49 Comments

PLEASE DO NOT USE MY IMAGES WITHOUT EXPRESSED WRITTEN PERMISSION.

I last shared this Sparrow in 2015. I don’t see many of them and I only see them during the Winter migration hanging out with the White-crowned Sparrows, but sadly, never at my feeder. Last week I saw this one.

He was pretty skittish. Every time I tried getting closer he flew further away so these are pretty well cropped.

Fun Facts:

- This sparrow is one of the least known of our songbirds, particularly on its northern breeding grounds. It has been the subject of only a few laboratory and field studies, so most of what we know about it comes from scattered notes in scientific journals.
- Miners in the Yukon at the turn of the twentieth century woefully referred to the Golden-crowned Sparrow as the “no gold here” bird, because its song resembled that depressing phrase. They also interpreted its song to say “I’m so tired,” prompting them to dub the bird “Weary Willie.”
- The Golden-crowned Sparrow arrives earlier and stays longer on its California wintering grounds than almost any other bird species.
- When day length increases in the spring, the Golden-crowned Sparrow detects the change through photoreceptors (light-sensitive cells). Its body responds by putting on fat and getting an urge to migrate.
- The oldest Golden-crowned Sparrow on record was at least 10 years, 6 months old. It was caught by a bird bander in California in 1970 and released.

Fun facts gleaned from allaboutbirds.org

I hope you all have a great week-end!

Nikon D810| Nikkor 500mm PF-e| PS CC 25.3.1

more to come…

2016 Perseids

August 14, 2016August 14, 2016Posted in Astro-Imaging, Astro-Photography, Meteors, Night Sky Imaging, Nikon, Nikon DF, Perseid Meteor Shower, Photography, Wide Field Astro-photographyTagged Astrophotography, Green tail Meteor, High ISO, Meteor, Night Sky Photography, Nikon, Perseid Meteor Showers, Star Gazing, Wide Field Astro-Photography31 Comments

I went out Friday night/Saturday morning star gazing hoping to photograph a meteor or two of the Perseid meteor shower. The Perseid Meteor shower is an annual event occurring from mid July to mid August as the Earth crosses the orbital path of Comet Swift-Tuttle; the parent of the Perseid meteor shower. Debris from the comet litters its orbital path, but we don’t get into the dense part of it until the first week of August. It’s this debris that slams into Earth’s upper atmosphere at 130,000 mile per hour lighting up the night sky with streaking Perseid meteors.

This year was to be particularly good for viewing more meteors because of our position in the debris path.

I saw a few really great meteors with wonderful balls of fire streaking through the sky, but the best image I made in 4 hours of sky watching was of this little meteor with some red at the head and a green tail. It’s a first time I’ve photographed the green tail.

There’s some of the Milky Way in there too, but faint, but there were oh, so many stars!

It was a wonderful night for star gazing.

Source-Earthsky.org

more to come…

Starry starry night

October 8, 2011October 8, 2011Posted in California, PhotographyTagged High ISO, Milky Way, Nikkor, Photography; Long Exposures; Night Photography, Sierra Nevada2 Comments

Starry-starry-night_0015-web, originally uploaded by dmzajac2004-.

It’s very compressed in this view. Please click on the photo to see it large. It really does look better!

The night before the WorldWide Photowalk I did a little night photography. The Milky Way shot I want still eludes me…one day I’ll get it!
The Moon was a bit too bright for this shot to come out the way I had envisioned it, but the color from the light pollution, the cloud formation, and the pine trees in silhouette made this shot for me.

This is a southwestern sky.

Eastern Sierras, California

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