Bird Attraction Blog has Moved!!

I have my own site now. To view this blog, go to http://birdattraction.com.

Northern Mockingbird has Arrived!

The Northern mockingbird has arrived! I suspect he's already been here 3 or 4 days, but today is the first time I heard or saw one, so I'm calling it today: 5/8/2011.

Because I wasn't quick enough these were the best pictures I could get, at around 200 yards:

Typically, they don't spend much time on my property. When they are here and see me, they get as far away from me as they can. Consequently, I have never gotten a good mockingbird picture.

This summer is going to be different -- I'm going to find out what they like and provide it for them.

F-Stop and Depth of Field

I've always known that in photography, the aperture affects the field depth.  A small f-stop means the aperture is larger, and a large f-stop means the aperture is smaller.  A large f-stop, therefore, necessitates reduced exposure time.  With a small f-stop, the shutter has to stay open longer for a proper exposure.

I like things to be simple. Especially when I'm taking pictures, I don't like to think about aperture size, f-stops, etc. My thinking has been that I could set the control on my camera to "Tv" (Shutter priority), choose my speed, and let the camera intelligence make all the decisions for me.  I believed, because a higher f-stop lets in less light, that depth of field was governed by how long the film was exposed by light. Although incorrect, that line of reasoning usually worked pretty well for me, because most of my pictures are taken with a zoom lens.  Then I took this picture (speed 1/160, f. 5.6):

With my reasoning, it would make sense that at 1/160 the depth of field would be greater. Instead, note how the bird 'pops' out of the background!  That made me curious, so I decided to explore this further. I had also taken this (speed 1/160, f. 8.0):

I realized my reasoning must be faulty. So I researched it on the internet (thanks, Internet!). I discovered that it's the angle of light hitting the film that affects depth of field the most. When using a zoom lens, the light's angle is smaller the more the subject is magnified. So the depth of field is already going to be shorter than it would be if you were using a shorter lens. The aperture size also affects the angle of light hitting the film. The larger the aperture (and smaller the f-stop), the wider the angle of light allowed to hit the film. The smaller the aperture (larger f-stop), the shorter the light angle.  So shutter speed has absolutely nothing to do with it!

My equipment is the best I can afford. But it's not good enough to take the pictures I want to take in every situation. I need to make up for that by being better at using the equipment. So I will be spending some time in the next couple of weeks exploring the f-stop. 

To help me remember what the f-stop is, I "borrowed" a diagram from Wikipedia.*

 

The smaller the hole the higher the f-stop number. The higher that number, the tighter the angle. The tighter the angle, the shorter the depth of field. 

One could think of the f-stop as the "Angle Tightness Indicator." The higher the number, the tighter the light angle. When you want a short depth of field, you need a high angle tightness.

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* Wikipedia image came from Wikimedia Commons. It is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation Licence. The picture can be found here.

Barn Swallow Arrival!

I first saw a Barn swallow today. I'm going to put their arrival at sometime yesterday, 5/6/2011.

Dovirsety

Around my house, I have frequently seen 3 species of doves: Eurasian collared, White-winged and Mourning. The most common here is the Eurasian collared dove:

According to the experts, this dove is larger than either the White-winged or Mourning doves, but they all look the same size to me.

This species comes from Europe and Asia presumably, and has covered most of the continent after being introduced to Florida in the 1970s. I'd prefer indigenous species like the Mourning dove, but if they can survive here without my help and aren't wiped out by the many raptors around here, then maybe they belong. I am a little concerned about the native species -- interbreeding and competition can't be a good thing.

Right now, there are about 30 doves living around my house. Most of them are Eurasian collareds, but there is a small percentage of the other two species in the mix. I'll take some pictures of the others when the opportunity presents itself. There's a cycle -- the flock grows to around 50 birds, the hawks move in and kill off 90% of them, then the flock grows to around 50 birds again.

I have a friend in California who works as a butcher. He said these birds are delicious, told me how to clean the carcass for consumption and suggested I eat them.  Although I'm not opposed to hunting. I'd rather just shoot them with my camera. I have to admit though -- I do wonder sometimes how they would look and smell, roasting in my oven.

Screwing up a Perfectly Good Picture

I looked out the patio window a little while ago, and saw a crow taking a bath. I've never been all that excited about crows.  They're everywhere, they're loud, they all look the same. But a well-groomed crow is not without appeal. I bet the chicks dig him (at least his do).

I thought this crow looked comical. So I grabbed my camera and took a few shots.  Here's the best one:

Even shot through a tinted window, it looked pretty good. After I applied a couple of touch-ups using Gimp, it was a picture I could almost be proud of. Except:

1. The stick in front of him ruins the whole picture. It's not something I noticed through the viewfinder, but it is very noticeable in the image.
2. The silver vertical bar behind him is a little distracting.

I can't do much about the first item. I put the sticks there for birds to perch on. If I remove the stick, maybe I can reproduce this shot without the stick, but that would defeat the stick's purpose: If a bird perches on that stick I can crop it so that the fiberglass pond isn't visible. It allows me to change the subject's context. So the stick stays.

I can do something about the vertical bar.  It's just a tree trunk with foil wrapped around it to discourage my goats from eating the tree. A couple of months ago, I discovered a goat stripping the bark off of that tree. He  stripped it all the way around the trunk, top to bottom, except for a 1/4" strip.  The aluminum foil made the goat lose interest.  I'm still not sure if the three is going to survive. For my pictures, all I have to do is paint the foil light brown, and the trunk would barely be noticeable. So that's what I'm going to do this weekend.

More Bird Photo Experimentation

I decided to make lemonade anyway.

I thought I would do some experimenting with shutter speeds in the snowstorm.  I don't know where birds go in a snowstorm, and I couldn't find any in the trees around my house. So I went with the next best thing: My granddaughter Kay-Lynne's punching bag. My daughter brought it over for temporary outside storage and it never left.

I should note that since I added a UV filter to my camera last week, I've been able to get good pictures at lower shutter speeds. Where previously 1/400 was the slowest I could go and still get consistently good close-ups, that number is now 1/320 (and maybe lower).

Here, the first picture was taken at 1/250.  You'll notice that the snowflakes traveled about 1/2 inch during this time.  

(I think that means the snowflakes were traveling at ~40 MPH but my math could be wrong. I also think, based on the angle of the white streaks left by the snowflakes, that the wind was ~20 MPH. So the bag was moving a little, just like a perched bird.)

The bag, which is moving slightly due to the fast wind, still looks fairly crisp.

The second picture, at 1/30, would still be a good picture if it was a bird, though it is blurred slightly. There are no snowflakes, just long white streaks on the "film."  The most telling part is the big 'E'.  It's darkened slightly compared to the picture above.

I would consider this a fairly good picture, though not nearly as good as the first picture. And since it's cloudy and overcast, 1/400 isn't really an option.

I really think that the UV filter I added has improved my picture taking.

I like capturing all of the bird details perfectly. But since this picture, I've started thinking more about composure:

The details aren't blurry, but they are softened. Not what I would normally wish for. But I'm very, very happy with this picture.  Most of the pictures I like would look good in a bird field manual. But sometimes it's really hard to get close enough for that kind of perfection, unless you have the $8,000.00 to spend on the right zoom lens. I don't know about you, but I don't have that kind of scratch.

This summer, I'll be doing a lot of experimenting. I'm still going to spend time trying to get closeups of birds I don't have good closeups of yet. But I'm also going to try to be creative at low shutter speeds.

Even if you can't afford state-of-the-art hardware, you can still take really nice pictures. It's just hard work. My solution is to spend a lot of time "lying in wait." My brother-in-law took an amazing wetlands sunset picture -- with the 2MP camera in his phone. It was poster quality, and my sister made a poster out of it.

Good digital cameras can be had for cheap these days. I bought Kay-Lynne a camera for her birthday this coming Wednesday (she never reads my blog, so my secret is safe). It's a really nice camera, with a modest zoom, for under $150. The trick is to improve the zoom level. With SLR, you just buy a zoom lens. But even without SLR, it's not too difficult, and it's far less expensive.  Here's one $40 example.

If you have fun taking bird pictures, I'd be interested in hearing from you. Especially if you've come up with creative solutions to getting close with a budget digital camera.

It just stopped snowing. Maybe today isn't a complete loss after all.

Snowing on the First Weekend in Spring?

I said that Thursday was the first day of spring, according to the Cassin's Kingbirds. Then I woke up this morning to an inch of snow on the ground. And it's still snowing. Yesterday, I unplugged the heater I use to keep the water pipes from busting. Today, I plugged it back in.

Yesterday, I went to Talin's Market to get some quail eggs. I was going to make some decoy nests for Brown-headed cowbirds. Today, I'm looking out the window at an almost horizontal sheet of falling snow. Temperature outside is 30 degrees Fahrenheit, and wind speed is 20 miles per hour.

Some people say "When life hands you lemon, make lemonade." You might expect me to close with a sentiment like that. But I just wish the sun would come out. I've waited months for spring. Now that it's arrived, I don't think it's too much to ask that it would just stop snowing.