Big Birthday Present

Debby and friend Joanne teamed up to give me a wonderful present - an all day training session with a local professional bird photographer (and former mountaineering guide). I wanted to learn both where to find birds around the area, and also how to better utilize the features of my camera gear.

Tim and I started out in Bellevue at 6AM a week ago. I wasn't sure what to expect, so packed a backpack for some hiking. But Tim had planned to make this an easy trip - we mostly wouldn't need to get out of the car.

We headed east over the Cascades to the vicinity of the Wenas Wildlife Area west of Ellensburg, the site of the Yakima Audubon Society's bluebird trail. Along a gravel back-country road, bird nesting boxes have been placed on fence posts, spaced to correspond to the birds' natural territorial spans. Tim said we would see western bluebirds, mountain bluebirds, and house wrens; he was three for three.

One drives right up to perhaps eight feet from these boxes. The birds do not seem to mind the presence of a car, but if we get out, they become shy. So we just rolled down the window, rested a bean bag on the sill to support the lens, then waited for the birds to pose.

The birds were feeding their young, still in the boxes. Both male and female would forage and return with grasshoppers, beetles, spiders, or berries. They would not directly approach the box, but rather staged their re-entry by landing on a nearby object, then another one or two hops ever closer, then onto and into the box.

Below are some photos from near the nesting boxes. Now I'm a real wildlife photographer (in my own mind), although the choice of image composition/background are somewhat reduced when shooting from inside a car. As can be seen however, background is not important when shooting with my long lens focused at near close focus limit - lens bokeh renders background a homogeneous shade of the predominant background color, either green or tan, with perhaps an upper band of blue.

Next, we headed on east across the Columbia. Suddenly, Tim hung a U-y in the middle of the highway and pulled onto the opposite shoulder. About 30' below the highway was a small brine pond where Tim said we would see some stilts and avocets and could practice our flight shooting technique.

It was a dicey scramble down the steep rocky slope for this elder citizen with heavy camera. Annoyingly, most of my pictures here didn't turn out. I had tried to follow Tim's instruction on overriding the exposure controls for flight shots, then forgot to set it back again. Also, my concentration was interrupted by a need to swat mosquitoes.

The avocets and stilts were protecting their nestlings, which we did not see. They were constantly flying up and down to attract our attention. Both species also performed wholly unconvincing, even hilarious broken wing demonstrations in the marsh grass in an effort to divert us from the nests.

We also saw a killdeer and some Wilson's phalarope on the pond, first sightings for me. My images of them are beneath mediocre; unfortunately none were in focus, one of life's small mysteries and a real disappointment. Maybe I've got a ways to go before I can earn my wildlife photography stripes. I did get one image of a black-necked stilt that pleased me.

My flight shots failed 100%; I need to better learn how to use autofocus to track moving targets, and then need a lot of practice in quickly acquiring focus on a fast moving bird. I have been somewhat successful in the past with slow-moving birds like gulls and pelicans, and also with hawks and vultures circling overhead. But these shorebirds were a big challenge. And the shorter distances necessitated surer reflex motions with the gear than I currently possess.

Tim uses Canon gear, and his setup instructions didn't translate exactly to my system. My camera manual was back up in the car. At over 400 pages and less than illuminating to me, it's a life's work to master it all. (The thought occurred to me that maybe I could get an electronic version on my iphone. Or, create my own simplified version.)

Before the trip, I had told Tim I would really like to find some owls to photograph. So Tim, ever obliging, continued on east past the town of Othello and out on a country gravel road into the potato fields. He parked on the shoulder past a large stack of hay bales and said this was where the owls should be. Right again.

Perhaps three family groups of burrowing owls were out sunning with their fledgelings near the concrete irrigation culverts on both sides of the road. Again, we didn't leave the car - just point and shoot out the window. I concluded the trip feeling once more like a wildlife photographer. Make it easy enough for me and I can succeed.

What are the secrets of  bird photography, you ask? Know where the birds are. Get out there with a camera. Know how to make the camera, the light, and the scene work for you. Be knowledgeable regarding bird behavior. Practice before the trip; be patient during the trip. I increased my skills this week thanks to Debby, Joanne, and Tim.

Tim particularly impressed me as a working photographer. He spends a lot of time on the road getting to the locations where the birds are. And then he spends a lot of time on location getting the good shots. There seems to be very little magic involved, just a lot of effort and a get up and go personality. It is the effort/motivation factor more than anything else that produces great bird images.

We covered a lot of Washington countryside that was new to me, on a trajectory that covered nearly 400 miles and extended well into southeastern Washington. Tim is a reservoir of pinpoint knowledge about where to find birds; the Pacific Northwest is in a  sense his own private zoo/aviary. I was delighted to get an insider's view. His plan for the day's shooting was well thought out and matched my skill level. And it included my first owl pictures in the wild. What a rewarding day!

New Camera At The Beach

Debby gave me a new camera for my birthday, a Nikon D300. I presented my old one, the D2H, to Dori on permanent loan.

Today, we had a couple of hours to kill between two parties, so Debby drove us to Dana Point for a short walk. I had brought my new camera, and had an opportunity to capture a couple of birds:



The first bird is a pigeon, aka rock dove, common as dirt. The second picture is of a cutie pie, very rare in these parts. Check out those red shoes. She's a great shopper also.

I love my new camera. It is smaller and lighter than the old one, has a built-in flash, and has nearly double the resolution, lower visible noise, and wider sensor bandwidth. It will lessen all the problems I have experienced in capturing images in difficult light and contrast situations, as well as providing a richer feature set. It uses all my existing lenses. Its controls are so similar to the D2H that my learning curve was very small.

What a nice day. The parties were good also, great company, food, and wine. Thanks to all, and good night.

Santa Barbara County Beach Camping

Last year, on the way home from camping at Jalama Beach, we stopped to check out El Capitan State Beach Park, perhaps 15 minutes north of Santa Barbara. We had heard it was the best around and weren't disappointed. So we decided to try to reserve a campsite for May and were successful (about 7 months in advance).

Last Monday, we packed the car and headed north. Upon arrival, we did not like the chosen site so much. Fortunately, still being off-season, the campground was underutilized. Debby talked to the camp hosts and the ranger and got us moved to a site across from the camp hosts' site and backing up to El Capitan stream. The camp hosts, Mike (botanist) and Jean (artist), were nice and helpful. Debby borrowed their hammer (one of several items forgotten) and we had the car unpacked and the camp setup in a flash.




El Capitan Stream is slow moving by May with most of its rocky bottom exposed. It is lined by live oak, sycamore, alder and willow. There were surprisingly no mosquitos. Yours truly got three photos there by the camp: red-winged blackbird, Anna's hummingbird, and a marauding skunk who was rummaging through a bag of something, probably removed from a campsite. Debby got my picture there as well.





We wasted little time making our first excursion to the beach, perhaps a 5 minute walk from our site. The entire park is situated on the ocean side of the Southern Pacific tracks and the 101 freeway, so one's sense of isolation is enhanced. The beach is sand at water level, backed by rocks, and rimmed in the park by grassy picnic table areas and iceplant. There is day use parking and new facilities accessible from 8AM-8PM.






We returned toward dusk each evening, and the first two nights were treated to a dolphin display just off the shore. Mr. Photog-wannabe wasn't clever enough to capture one of the large jumps out of the water, so had to settle for a couple of flashed dorsal fins. The third night, there were no dolphins visible at the appointed hour, but there was entertainment of another kind. A family of four set-up next to us. While the husband surf-fished, the wife tended the two children. We observed him pull three nice-sized fish from the surf in about 10 minutes. He was good at it.




We brought the coffee press, two burner propane stove, and small charcoal grill, so we ate well. One large cooler held our perishables. Monday dinner was mushroom and asparagus fettucini. Tuesday breakfast was french toast with bacon and pure maple syrup (Debby pre-mixed the batter). The remaining breakfasts were our usual cold cereal with fruit, sometimes accompanied by sourdough toast smeared with Nutella. We snacked on Genoa salami, bread, cheese, and wine. There were pastrami sandwiches and cup-o-noodles for lunches, accompanied by tea. For Tuesday dinner, we prepared two baked yams and a steak on our grill. The only hitch in our plan came Wednesday evening, when the propane canister ran out before the pea soup was heated. So we had a cold dinner instead. Later, Debby borrowed a propane canister from the camp hosts so that we could have toast and coffee for our last breakfast in camp.

Our camp was attended by an assortment of critters and dirt birds that ate everything we threw their way, and some that we did not (a scrub jay scored my entire baggie of cereal on the first day, but fortunately dropped the bag still within view of the site, so I could retrieve it, filled with holes, but most of the contents still present.)






Debby would nap in the tent in the afternoons while camera dude went exploring. She really likes the feeling of being in her tent, though next time we will pitch in a more shaded location.

There is a 'nature trail' that wanders off from the main beach path toward El Capitan stream near where it enters the ocean. The nature path, lined with poison oak, meanders under a sycamore canopy through fields of nasturtiums accented with vinca major (periwinkle). The sycamores proved to be a playground for towhee's, while the shady river hosted a male and female mallard.









Imaging nature up close can be done two ways, from a distance with a powerful telephoto lens, or by moving the camera very close to the subject. In either case, the telephoto zoom remains on the camera; it's the lens I use 95% of the time in the field. Getting close with the 80-400mm zoom by itself is not possible; the lens' closest focus distance is on the order of 10'. To do close-ups with it, one needs to add a quality close-up lens to the front, in my case the Canon 500D, enabling focusing within inches of a tiny subject. The flowers above benefited from that technique, as do the dragonfly and bees below. They were found along the nature trail and at the beach, imaged with the lens set a little over 100mm. The butterfly would not pose for a close-up, so its image is from 12' at 400mm.





The daylight hours at our campsite were dominated by bird calls: red-winged blackbirds, spotted and California towhees, and scrub jays already shown, combined with the ubiquitous crows and doves. A Eurasian collared dove was kind enough to pose above our campsite. I wouldn't have expected to see this bird in these parts, so I may have mis-identified it. Unfortunately, I hadn't set the camera to a high enough ISO, so all pictures I took before it flew away were at 1/40s and none turned out. The best of the lot is below, along with a couple of crows from near the beach.




At night, the bird calls went away, replaced by an absolute cacophony of frog calls that was surprisingly loud. That's the riparian life. We scouted other sites away from the stream, where the night music would be only the sound of the surf. We might go for one of those sites next time, even though they are more exposed to wind.

Since El Capitan is all about the beach, it seems fitting to conclude with images of more critters found along the shore. The pelican fishing technique is particularly enjoyable to watch. One wonders how many of those dives is actually successful. And perhaps 50% are aborted at the last second.