Big Half Year Florida Note

Currently winding up my Florida adventure and editing photos. I am still in Florida. Sunday ended up being a more adventurous travel day than I anticipated. It started with a leisurely beach walk then wandering into a naturist beach and was topped off with a flight attendant offering us an insane travel voucher with first class tickets if we'd give up our seats. Having noted a nasty ice storm in the works that we'd have to drive home through after we landed late, I opted to stay in Florida for another day and edit photos in seventy degree temps. I think I more than doubled my Big Half Year Total!

Finally! Rock Pigeons! Whew, so glad I was able to get that right before the end of January! That bird was a real nail biter!

But seriously, I cleaned up on wetlands species--like this green heron giving the business to a turtle.  Digiscoping in Viera Wetlands is like shooting fish in a barrel.  I learned that Viera has been closed to vehicle traffic (though, if I lived here, I think I would be all over biking that place). But keep that in mind if you decided to visit.  Cars haven't been allowed in most of it since September.

I'll be adding more photos to the album over the next few days. This new digiscoping set up gets so many amazing photos, my challenge is figuring out which amazing photo of the tri-c0lored heron I want to be in the final album.

I did have my first heartbreaking photo miss.  The above black skimmer.  It's just not in focus enough for me to count it. Non Birding Bill thought it should be counted because even he could tell it was a skimmer...and should I be worried.  He goes to the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival and he can suddenly ID skimmers?  Anyway, I don't know if I will be anywhere else where skimmers are possible this year, so this is my first big dip on a bird.  Ah well.

Here's the official Big Half Year Flickr Album.

Here's information on the Big Half Year fundraiser for Friends of  Sax Zim Bog that I'm raising money for.

Win My Spotting Scope!!

This is the story of a girl and her spotting scope...

Oh, the adventures I have had with my Swarovski ATM spotting scope. It has literally traveled the world with me. We ascended Volcán Atitlánin Guatemala to see horned guans. We survived rigorous airport security in Kazakhstan to view breeding sociable lapwings on the Kazak Steppes. We got our lifer Syrian woodpecker outside a mine field on the Syria/Israel border. We even delighted in digiscoping tufted titmice at Neil Gaiman’s bird feeders. We’ve showered together when covered in sand and dust. In short: we have had a blast.

But, some partnerships must end and some things are so awesome, they should be shared. Swarovski hires me from time to time to teach workshops, test equipment and help out at booths. That means I need to have the latest equipment to take to events. When equipment changes, I have the option of purchasing the older equipment or I can send it back to Swarovski. With the debut of the new Swarovski ATX scope, it was time to change out my equipment.

This time I asked, “Hey, could I have a contest so one of my blog readers could get my scope and all the great birding mojo that has built up with it over the years?”

And Swarovski said, “Yes!”

So, anyone who reads my blog has a chance to win a FANTASTIC spotting scope. You will receive my ATM scope with 20 – 60 zoom eyepiece and my carbon fiber tripod (and I’ll even throw in my DCA digiscoping adapter). This is a scope and tripod that has been loved hard and used on a daily basis. I will send it in to Swarovski headquarters to get cleaned up before you get it (maybe Gail can finally get that heron poop stain off) and whoever wins it will also get the Swarovski Optik limited lifetime warranty with the scope. I love this thing, it has been such a wonderful birding companion and helped me id so many birds and I hope whoever wins it, gets the birds of a lifetime that I have gotten with it.

I really wanted to come up with a contest that would level the playing field. The logical thing would be a photo contest, but if you can get really great photos, you don’t need my scope. I want any birder of any age to have a shot at winning this magnificent, light-weight beast. I thought about a guest blogging contest but I know not everyone is comfortable writing, so Non Birding Bill and I kicked around ideas to figure out what would be something universal that anyone could do…and we landed on a contest that would truly level the playing field:

 Birdchick’s WORST bird photo contest!

That’s right, kids, send me your worst bird photo: blurry, over exposed, under exposed, funny, weird, get creative. That’s right, I want to see the worst bird photo you can possibly take. There are any number of ways to do it, so you can go bonkers with this.

We will post our favorite images and then those that are selected as our favorites will be entered into a drawing and we will pick the winning name from that bank of entries!

Rules:

1. Photo must be one that you have taken. You can’t just harvest a bad photo off of Wikipedia or Google Image Search. I have strong Google Fu and will find it if you do.
2. Photo must be accompanied by a brief description or what you think the bird was that you were trying to photograph.
3. Photos must be emailed to sharon at birdchick dot com.
4. Photo submissions must include your first and last name in the email and your shipping address (so if you win, I know where to send my scope off to).
5. Photos must be submitted no later than February 8, 2013. The winner will be drawn and announced on February 11, 2013.

   

Don't be afraid to get creative! Good luck!!

Will I See You At The Space Coast Birding & Wildlife Festival?

As I hunker in for a day of sub zero weather with windchill set to surpass -30 tonight, I'm so looking forward to going to Titusville, Florida for the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival this week with Non Birding Bill. What are we doing there? Well, Non Birding Bill is now freelancing as a video editor and we are going to make some digiscoping videos. If you see us out and about and have a digital camera or smartphone, let's see if we can get you to digiscope some images and maybe they'll end up in the final edit! If we aren't in the field, we will be hanging out at the Swarovski booth in the vendor area.  Please come up and say hi.  This is one of those rare opportunities to meet the infamous NBB.

I'm especially looking forward to all the digiscoping opportunities to be had at Viera Wetlands and that's probably where we will spend a majority of our time. It's like Disney Land for nature photographers.

I'll see if I can NBB excited about a limpkin!  OK, OK, so that may be a little too brown for him, but I'm hoping I can show him a spoonbill or wood stork, he's gotta dig on those! At least there will be lots of birds that are big and obvious and easy to see.

I'm also totally geeked because I got word via social media that Mark Beaman will be there and he coauthored The Handbook of Bird Identification for Europe and the Western Palearctic.  I actually met him at The Biggest Week in 2012 but didn't make the connection that it was the same fellow.  This book is probably going to bite me in the butt in baggage fees (as it has when I have taken it with me to Kazakhstan and the Middle East, but it will be worth it. 

Picking My Battles With Bird Photos

 

As I do my competition for the Big Half Year, I know this issue is going to come up again and again.  Which photos to count? Above is a very mediocre or what I would call a documentation photo that I got at Pig's Eye Outflow in St Paul this week. There's identifiable common goldeneye in that shot...but would I get a better photo later. Who can say with my crazy schedule and migration. You really never know with birds and this may be as good as it gets goldeneye wise with me.  I know my buddy Craig Nash is insisting that all my photos be in focus to be countable (unlike The World Series of Birding rules). But would the above photo count.

And then I went to Lake Rebecca in Hastings, MN and found a lovely albeit backlit goldeneye. I bided my time and worked my way around the lake to see if I could position myself to have the sun behind me instead of the goldeneye. When I do something like this, I try to walk in a way that the bird doesn't notice. I'll look in the opposite direction of the bird and even make sure that my scope's objective lens isn't facing the bird as I carry it. If I stared at the bird the whole time, the bird might become suspicious as to why I'm staring at it, I'd look like a predator.

I eventually found a better position on the lake...but then the camera flaked out and under exposed the crap out of it. But a few adjustments in the settings and viola:

A reasonable common goldeneye photo and bird number 15 for my Big Half Year fundraiser for a Sax Zim Bog visitor center!

He even found a female goldeneye to hang out with on the lake.

This lake has a large population of mallards and Canada geese (and even a young trumpeter swan) hanging out. It's a popular town activity to bring your kids and a bag of corn or bread and feed everybody. I wonder if the goldeneye notice the mass exodus of waterfowl when a car pulls in and wonder what the fuss is about. These ducks are fish eaters so the corn and bread is wasted on them. But the goldeneye's presence is a good sign for ice fishermen who tempt fate on the frozen-ish side of the lake.

Here's a link to the Flickr  and I cannot say this enough: thank you to everyone who has donated so far. I had absolutely no clue what I'd raise with this thing and seeing it past the $250 mark is an honor. With all the participants, the fund is already at 15%!  That's fantastic--we have until June 30, 2013 to make the goal so to be at this point before the end of January--is fantastic!

Birdchick Podcast #130: Weird jobs Sharon wants to take

Crazy Bird Jobs: Polish Bird Job

Klamath Intern

Kittlitz's Murrelet "job"

Top 10 Birding Taboos...

Speaking of which, the American Birding Association has a whole new listing website called Listing Central!

Man claims to have photographed a red-tailed hawk that ate too much.

Sax Zim Bog in the news!

Some people are weirder about birds than I am.

Image from the National Audubon Society Gala...

Big Half Year Birds

 

I got a trumpeter swan while going for some waterfowl in Hastings, MN for my Big Half Year challenge.  This immature bird was by itself and not with a family group. I didn't see any other trumpeters around.

It did some a bit closer when some people arrived to feed the mallards and I noticed that it appears to have an injury to its upper beak. It was still able to forage underwater with it but I'm curious what happened if that was the reason why it wasn't with other swans.

When I arrived at the parking lot, there was a large flock of mallards sleeping. When I put my car in park, they all got up and came towards me like a zombie hoard. I got a quick video with my phone:

http://youtu.be/Xf2OJkWUGHU

Sorry mallards, I don't feed bread to ducks.  Don't worry, at least 8 other groups arrived in the hour and a half I was there with corn and bread to feed them.  They've got plenty of food...though perhaps similar to fast food in nutrition.

Man, when this Nikon V1 is on, it's really, really on.  So here's another bird for my Big Half Year challenge.

I couldn't resist getting some shots of this bathing mallard. I know I shouldn't anthropomorphize but boy that's a sassy looking bird and he does look like he's having a great time.

So, birds 13 and 14 for the list!

To see my complete list thus far, visit my Flickr set for the Big Half Year.

Big Half Year Bird #12 Wood Duck!

It's taken me quite a bit of practice and today I took 1086 photos and kept 261 of them (less than a dozen of which will end up in the blog).  I'm going to start including how many shots I took and deleted to give folks an idea of how many pictures I'll take in a setting and also to give an idea of how often I'm hitting the Delete Key. I'm still trying to sort out my differences with the Nikon V1.  We've certainly had our growing pains, like today it totally froze in place and I couldn't even turn it off.  I had to eject the battery to restart it and it forgot all of my settings. However, when lighting is right and the bird is in position, I can get shots like this:

This was digiscoped with the Nikon V1, Swarovski ATX scope with 85mm objective lens. It helps that this was one cooperative male wood duck...who seemed glued to the hip of a male mallard (but who am I to judge).

I'm not much of a lister (not that I have anything against people who do list birds, just has never been what floats my boat). However, I do like the challenge of seeing how many different species I can digiscope.  I may keep this going all year.  It gives me more of a purpose in the field (especially since the overall goal is a visitor center for Sax Zim Bog). And again, thank you to everyone who has donated.  As said earlier, I've taken my name out of the running for any prize, I just like bringing attention to this awesome birding area in Minnesota.

To see my complete list thus far, visit my Flickr set for the Big Half Year.

Digiscoping Big Half Year Bird #10

So yesterday I posted that I got a shot of bird #11 for my Big Half Year, but I neglected to post bird #10:

Bird #10 was a female pileated woodpecker digiscoped at Minnesota Valley NWR using the new Swarovski ATX scope and my iPhone 4s (no adapter, I handheld it for this shot). Not bad, especially since I had to angle myself in a way to avoid window glare and all the dirt on the window.

Also, I see that people have pledge $181 so far! THANK YOU! I can't tell you how happy this makes me.  And again, I don't care if yo pledge for me or pledge for someone else, the goal is that we get the funds for a visitor center to be built in this unique birding habitat and help conserve more land up there. Thank you, that was a fun thing to see when I checked it today.

You can see my gallery of all my birds thus far at Flickr.

Tryin' To Get That Digiscoping Feelin' Again

So in an effort to get to know my new digiscoping set up better, I keep stopping out here and there to test out different settings.  Today...I had my ISO way too high and ended up with some arty shots that I kind love:

I love how eerie these bleached out crows look--something only a photographer would say when most of their photos are bad...they're ARTY!

This kind of looks like a drawing.  I did get the ISO down to 100 and got a more reasonable shot (and bird #11 for my Big Half Year).

And this would be my first official photo with my new digiscoping set up.  Once I get used to this system, I think we will get along fine. I've taken just under 800 photos with my set up and this is the first one that I thought was good enough for the blog.  I write that because I meet so many people who get a digiscoping set up and after 16 pictures, never touch it.  It takes several shots to get used to all the bells and whistles on your camera.  You should go out and practice on starlings, chickadees, Canada geese to get a feel for the system, figure out what adjustments you need for different light settings, that way you'll be ready when you go warbler watching or on that trip to Central America. I didn't expect to take over 700 hundred photos to get used to the system, but this camera has burst mode so I ended up with more shots than I bargained for even when lightly pressing the button.  But when  you have a set up, take a crap load of photos and get on a first name basis with your delete key.  That is the number one step to getting better photos: PRACTICE!

I'm desperately trying to get this in before we head to Space Coast next week.  I want a lot of these settings to be second nature so I can grab spectacular shots of spoonbills, ibises, wood storks and limpkins.

New Swarovski Digiscoping Set Up With the ATX

I had such high hopes for the start of 2013.  I am back freelancing, I set some minor digiscoping goals for the blog, I downloaded apps on my iPhone and iPad to synch things and make sharing links via all my social medias and easy cheesy process.  I spent the week between Christmas and New Years getting my collective crap in order. Then, I got a new spotting scope! And the new scope's digiscoping adapter doesn't work with my Nikon D40.  Then my five year old MacBook Pro had some screen issues.  For no apparent reason and with incredibly unpredictable timing, the screen would go black.  I found a temporary fix that worked about one out of twelves times that I tried it, but it was not an ideal situation for answering work email, blogging and in some cases sharing links.

I was irritated and fascinated.  It's amazing to me how much my laptop is like a car and breaks down at the least convenient moment, like when I am in a tiny town in Missouri with no hope of an Apple store within 50 miles. I really hoped I could do some patch fixes until February because I didn't want to deal with a new laptop and new camera at the same time but that's the way it crumbles, cookie-wise.

So! Here is what my old digiscoping set up involved:

A Swarovski ATM spotting scope with a 20-60 zoom eyepiece, a DCA digiscoping adapter and a Nikon D40.  A trusty system that has seen me through several states, countries and even survived a broken camera battery door.  I was very pleased with this setup, would have preferred a smaller camera that also did video, but at the end of the day, loved what this system did for me.

Over the last year I have also incorporated an iPhone 4s into my digiscoping routine with my Swarovski ATM, DCA adapter and an iTelligent adapter.  I am fairly adept at hand holding my iPhone up to the scope to get decent still images, but at the end of the day, to do video, you really need something to secure it to the scope if you want to take video.

Then Swarovski sent me the new ATX scope with the new TLS APO adapter...and as said earlier, that adapter does not work with the Nikon D40.

The TLS APO adapter is designed to go directly on the camera body, so you take off the camera lens to attach the adapter.  With this particular Nikon, it thinks that you do not have a lens attached and refuses to take any photos.  I had to get a new camera.

I talked to my friends at Swarovski, checked in with digiscoping guru Mike McDowell to see how he was using the new scope and what didn't work and what did work.

Then I took my scope, my adapter and my budget to National Camera Exchange in Golden Valley, MN (there is a difference in customer service between the various locations and in my experience, that one is the best.  Ask for Curt or Kevin). I cannot stress enough that when you have a new scope and you want to find a camera, take it in with you to find your camera.  Play with them together, get a feel for how they will work together.  My favorite camera was the Nikon V2.  However, after purchasing a fancy new laptop, it was not in my budget.  Since the Nikon V2 had just come out, the Nikon V1 is discontinued and you can get the camera body right now for $350 to $399.  It's a steal.  It's compact, it does video and it works with the new system.

Here is my new rig: the Nikon V1, a Nikon T ring, a Nikon FT 1 adapter, (a crazy, somewhat pricy piece of equipment that has electronics in it but tells the camera that there is an actual lens on the camera), the TLS APO adapter and the ATX 85 mm scope.

I'm still learning how to get my digiscoping mojo on.  I took 549 photos with it the other day and none of them are worth posting in the blog because I'm still trying to get my settings figured out.  FYI, you cannot use every mode the V1 offers with the TLS APO.  I cannot use the Smart Photo Selector Mode or the Motion Snap Shot Mode but I can use general camera and movie mode which is what I wanted.

And after the laptop and new camera, I am now setting my check card in some ice to cool off.

Some of you may be wondering what I'm doing with my old spotting scope since I now have a new one...well, folks, I'm going to give it away! That's right, I'm going to have a contest coming up soon and the rules are going to even the playing field.  I'll announce details very soon, but the contest is geared so that anyone could enter, no matter the birding ability.  It has nothing to do with getting the best photo of a bird (if you can do that, you certainly don't need my scope). So keep your eye pealed, you could win my old Swarovski ATM 80mm scope!