Wldlife of Edmonds, WA. 2014

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squirl033

Super Moderator
Staff member
My one and only reasonable keeper from today - gads, no light! Now, if I had that 5Diii I could have boosted up the ISO. This was shot at 1/320s f5.6 ISO 800 Canon 7D 400mm f5.6L Hand held. Not too sharp (motion blur), but hopefully one can tell its a female Belted Kingfisher :)
View attachment 13346

nice, Terry... i've always had trouble just getting close to those little stinkers! how far away were you?

BTW, you CAN shoot at higher ISO with the 7D... i've had pretty good luck up past 1600...
 

Bill Anderson

Super Moderator
Staff member
I like the way you cropped these, Bill. Thanks for the heron info too :)

My standard cropping setting is a standard 4"x6", but sometimes I will set the crop to manual if the photo warrants something out of the ordinary.

A combination of lousy weather + NFL playoffs + WSU basketball curtailed any photo missions this past weekend. :mad:
 
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Terry O

Well-Known Member
A couple of shots taken yesterday afternoon, January 13, from the Edmonds Pier. Both taken with the Canon 7D and 400mm f5.6L.
They look pretty tame after seeing the fantastic eagle sequence you took AFTER I left, Bill :)

Male Common Golden Eye
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Female Red-breasted Merganser
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Terry O

Well-Known Member
nice, Terry... i've always had trouble just getting close to those little stinkers! how far away were you?

BTW, you CAN shoot at higher ISO with the 7D... i've had pretty good luck up past 1600...

Hi Rocky, and thanks. I was fairly close - maybe 50 feet or so. She is pretty tame, thanks to all the folks that walk the Edmonds Pier. With the 7D I find even ISO 1600 a bit too noisy, unless I can use most of the frame.
 

Bill Anderson

Super Moderator
Staff member
Tuesday (1/14) my son and I stopped briefly at Mini Park in Lynnwood. I had never before seen any in the small lake, but two double-crested cormorants were present while we were there. The feathers on this one look like a dragon's scales. Shades of Smaug!
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Two Pacific wrens were in a blackberry bramble on the west side of the park. This is the first good photo I have taken of one. Their name was recently changed from winter wren, which is still found in older bird books. According to Birds of the Puget Sound Region, the house wren is the sole local wren waiting for me to photograph.
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A Bewick's wren was in the same bramble, which made for a good comparison between the two wren species.
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The two that got away: a golden-crowned kinglet at Mini Park and a sharp-shinned hawk in my neighbor's back yard.

I think it was my first prolonged look at a sharpie. Based on its robinesque size and shape, I initially thought it was one of the varied thrushes spending the winter in my back yard until I got out the binos. It was noticeably smaller than its look-alike cousin, the Cooper's hawk. Compared to the Cooper's hawk, the tail appeared shorter and head smaller in relation to its body.

I had earlier noticed feathers on the ground in my back yard and assumed my cat had taken a small bird hanging out in the rhodies under my bird feeder. After seeing the sharpie, I wonder if it was responsible for the pile of feathers.
 
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Bill Anderson

Super Moderator
Staff member
From Wednesday (1/15).

A juvenile bald eagle, possibly a second year bird, was perched in the raptor tree on the grounds of the Willow Creek fish hatchery.
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It remained there while my son and I walked the Pt. Edwards walkway.
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Some time later we saw it flying south around Pt. Edwards when we were at Marina Park. One of the Pt. Edwards adults had been on patrol over Puget Sound and flew back to investigate. Another eagle is added to the Edmonds winter eagle population.

A merlin was perched on the Pt. Edwards eagles' family tree which straddles the Edmonds-Woodway boundary line at the top of Pine St. The light was not good, but I got enough shots to identify the bird as a merlin and not a small hawk.
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D*** branch!
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It took off as I was repositioning myself for a better view. This is admittedly a very poor shot, but it does show the wings have the thin, angular shape of a falcon wing and not the wide, broad shape of the wing of a sharp-shinned or Cooper's hawk.
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Terry O

Well-Known Member
Glad you spotted the Merlin - too bad you weren't able to change your position in time....We'll have to keep an eye out for it.
 

Bill Anderson

Super Moderator
Staff member
It was dark, cold, and gloomy Thursday (1/16) down at Marina Park. Terry and Janine had taken some X-rated eagle porn shots courtesy of the shameless Pt. Edwards pair, but the action had ceased and the male flown off by the time I arrived. :mad:

The juvie I had photographed in the raptor tree the previous day flew directly overhead.
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We have often wondered where the herons spend their time when not at the marsh. I caught them perched on the roof of G Dock at the marina. They never get this close to each other at the marsh.
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Terry O

Well-Known Member
I just posted a new thread with the mating sequence, Bill. Sorry you missed the show - isn't that a switch!!! :)
 

Bill Anderson

Super Moderator
Staff member
Friday (1/17): Birds in flight past the fishing pier. It was dark and overcast, so I shot at 1/500 to keep the ISO down. I expected wing blur but hoped the bodies and heads would be in focus. I normally do not shoot birds in flight at less than 1/1000.

Double-crested cormorant.
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Immature male surf scoter.
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Female red-breasted merganser.
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Brant (yes, they're back).
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Mystery duck.
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Bill Anderson

Super Moderator
Staff member
Monday (1/20) was the first sunny day in ages. Terry and I went to the fish hatchery, where we often see little birds in the bushes when the sun comes out. We were not disappointed as we saw two of our favorites.

Ruby-crowned kinglet
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Varied thrush
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Bill Anderson

Super Moderator
Staff member
A bald eagle was perched on the very top of the raptor tree on the fish hatchery grounds. I have not seen the eagles perch in the raptor tree very often over the past year and they seldom perch on the very top, prefering the bare branches farther down which stick out from the side instead.

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Bright sunshine + bright white eagle feathers called for negative exposure compensation.
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Terry O

Well-Known Member
Sterling job especially on the kinglets and thrush, Bill. That extra reach and the 5D iii really counted.
 

Bill Anderson

Super Moderator
Staff member
Sterling job especially on the kinglets and thrush, Bill. That extra reach and the 5D iii really counted.

You buy a new 5D Mk III and I'll get that used 600L telephoto lens you keep dangling before me. Then neither of us will have anything to lust after until next year when Canon comes out with a 1Dx Mk II . ;)
 
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JaniceL

Super Moderator
Staff member
You buy a new 5D Mk III and I'll get that used 600L telephoto lens you keep dangling before me. Then neither of us will have anything to lust after until next year when Canon comes out with a 1Dx Mk II . ;)

I had a chance to shoot all weekend with a 1DX. A beauty to behold. :) Made me sad to let it go. LOL.
 

JDueckPhoto

New Member
After switching to all full frame cameras last year I miss the ~1.5x extra reach of the crop sensors. Unless you have a 600mm+ lens I guess :)

For bird pics I often crop out 1/2 the image on even my closest shots on full frame but with the D300 (1.5x crop factor) I could keep more of the images and it was sometimes better for image detail. If I shot birds all the time I wouldn't see much of a reason to get FF unless shooting with higher ISO (and thats becoming less of an issue with new good sensor designs) or you want a better focusing system. In my experience the flagship cameras from Canon and Nikon both have a big step up in AF, in low light and consistency.
 
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