While their bright feathers offer protective camouflage on the ground, they make the thrush very visible in a tree. Robins are also members of the thrush family. Varied thrush and robins can be easily mistaken for each other in low light when all you can see is a silhouette and a pattern of movement.
I was using high ISO settings due to the the poor light. Close cropping caused the photos to look soft due to the noise.
Backing off on the cropping may have shown too much background for a perfect bird book shot, but it reduced the noise.
The trees at the bottom of the ravine where the barred owl pair hung out all summer are completely devoid of leaves, which would expose the owls to the evil minions of the Dark Lord and any other birds which care to harass them. I led my expedition to the top of the ravine at the NE corner of the park, where a thick stand of Doug firs creates a nice canopy for the owls to hide under. I thought our best chance of spotting one or both owls was there.
The mother and fellow member of the Bird Fest planning committee was the first to spot the owl perched on the branch of a Doug fir ahead and downhill of us. As is typical, the owl just watched us as we walked directly under it. It was so dark that I was shooting in
Tv mode at 1/125, with the ISO set at 51200. This pegged out the aperature to its maximum of
f/5.6.
Even with the camera's noise reduction set to full, I knew the shots were going to be very noisy. I therefore got close enough to get full frame shots which would require no cropping.
We walked down the north side of the ravine, crossed Shell Creek, and walked up the service road on the south side of the ravine. Although we only saw one owl, we heard two owls calling to each other about an hour before sunset. Both calls appeared to be emanating from that NE corner of the park where we had been.