My week, wrong lens, wrong birds, wrong settings

Sunday

More heavy rain overnight, the clouds still linger, and it’s still humid this morning. I think that last Sunday started out much the same way. The forecast is for at least partial clearing later in the day, so I’m holding off going for a walk until then, if that happens. I checked the webcams from along Lake Michigan to see if there was any clearing off to the west of here, they are socked in with heavy fog, so we may not clear out as quickly as they say.

The wholesale price of gas has fallen 80 cents since the spike in prices, yet the price at the pump is just beginning to fall. I’m sure that the price will come down for the two weeks leading up to the Fourth of July holiday weekend, when there will be another problem at a refinery or with a pipeline, and prices will skyrocket again. I am such a cynic.

After two weeks of whining about wanting to travel more, what do I do? Stay home and walk the same trail day after day. I have no idea yet what I am going to do over the Fourth, it will all depend on gas prices and the weather. I’ll get two paychecks on the first payday in July, my normal check, plus a check for all the sick pay that I never use. Towards the middle of July, I’ll have two weeks of vacation coming.

I didn’t take any vacation time last year, I saved the pay, hoping to use it for the down payment on a condo, which didn’t work out, but the pay did become the down payment for my Forester. I know that I’m going to take at least one week off this year, I may even take both weeks together, which will leave my boss pulling his hair out. That’s not such a bad thing. 😉

But, the questions are, where do I go and when do I go there. A trip up to the Upper Peninsula to revisit the Porcupine Mountains, and Copper Harbor area is sounding really good to me at this time. It’s a beautiful area in the summer, but if I hold off until the end of September, it will be less crowded, and fall colors will add to the beauty of the area. It’s been at least five years since I’ve seen a waterfall, can you believe it?

Instead of prattling on about nothing, I should be making a list of some new places to visit around here, like the Allegan State Game Area, and a few others fairly close to home. I have a list in my head, but it escapes me when the weekends roll around, and I end up going to Muskegon, Saugatuck, or one of the other places I go on a regular basis.

My brother and sister-in-law just bought kayaks this weekend, so I think that I will pay them a visit soon, and spend a day kayaking to help them get started. That means that I’ll have to fall back on my Powershot point and shoot camera, but it takes pretty good photos.

I’m not risking the new camera gear in a kayak, even on a lake.

Well, even though it’s still cloudy outside, I guess I’ll eat breakfast, then head on over to Palmer Park for the day, even though it’s been a bust of late, other than deer.

Well, I said that we received heavy rain last night, and that was true! Buck Creek was over its banks in places. The boardwalk was the only way to get around up in the northwest corner of the park, water had even been over the boardwalk last night.

I’ve mentioned this a lot also, but it bears repeating, the plant life is loving the weather we’ve been having. I saw many deer today, probably because the places where they usually bed down for the day are under water, but I had a difficult time getting a good photo of most of them because the grass is now taller than the deer. Maybe I should have saved one of the photos I took of the deer in the tall grass, but I didn’t. I did save this one, even though it’s not that great, just because it shows the red summer coat of deer so well.

I did see two out in the open, and took many photos, but they had the light on me, so the photos are nothing special, I’ve posted much better before. But, here’s one, I’ll bet most people don’t see this everyday. 😉

The Sigma lens continues to amaze me, in how well it performs in very low light.

The hermit thrush was shot handheld at 403 mm, a shutter speed of 1/60 second, ISO 1600, and plus 1/3 exposure compensation. My first two shots were at 150 mm, as there was so little light, I had my doubts that they would come out sharp. I couldn’t resist zooming in as far as I dared to get the one above. For the auto-focus of the Sigma lens to pick up the thrush’s eye, and for the OS to work so well as to get a photo as sharp as it is under the circumstances, I am so happy that I bought that lens!

The 15-85 mm lens performs very well also.

All of the flower photos here would have been even better if the wind hadn’t been so strong today.

I’d get set up for just the shot that I wanted, and then that would happen, the wind would pick up just as I was pressing the shutter release.

You know that it’s a rather strange day when one of these….

…holds still longer than what flowers do, even when I have all my ducks in a row…

Fortunately, there’s one subject to photograph that you never have to worry about motion with.

It must have been egg laying day for the painted turtles, I saw four of them wandering around looking for a place to lay their eggs.

In case you hadn’t noticed, the sun did come out today. 😉

Well, I don’t have much else to say about my walk today, so I guess this is it for now.

Monday

Sunny and mild, a picture postcard mid-June day here in West Michigan.

Serious birding is over for the summer, especially this summer since I seldom see any birds any longer due to how thick the leaves are. I was hoping to make it half way through My Photo Life List this year, but it looks like that won’t happen. I’ll probably pick up a few more, but soon, the birds will be molting into their winter plumage, making identification that much harder.

I’m thinking that I’ll be leaving the Sigma lens home more often now while on my daily walks. I may regret that, but I think my back and shoulders will thank me for doing so. I’m not sure what’s going on with my body, it’s getting easier to sling the Sigma lens around when I need to when photographing things, but my shoulders and back begin to ache from carrying that lens around sooner while on a hike than they did when I first bought it. I should clarify this, it isn’t just carrying the Sigma lens around with me most of the time that’s bothering me, it’s carrying it, plus all the other camera gear, water, etc. that’s been putting an extra load on my back and shoulders.

A couple of friends of mine were serious weightlifters back in the 1980’s, and they always followed a schedule where they worked a set of muscles one day, then they rested those muscles to allow them to “rebuild” for a day or two before they worked them again. Since I never take a day off, I wonder if a couple of the muscle groups in my back and shoulders need a few days off to “rebuild”. We’ll see, right now, my legs feel as if they could use a day or two of rest as well. As far as I can remember, I don’t think that I’ve missed a daily walk since last November while I was moving, and my legs sure didn’t get any rest then, carrying things in and out of both apartments.

It would help if I went back to eating more, and better again. Since I am closing in on my weight loss goal, I have been starving myself for the last three months or so, and that’s not a good thing. I have no energy reserves left, other than fat, and a body needs more than that in order to stay active.

Well, enough of that gibberish, time for my walk.

You know what happened, don’t you? I took just the 70-200 mm lens today, and there were birds out in the open everywhere.

For the first time in a while, I really could have used the Sigma today to zoom in on the birds. Since I couldn’t do that, I amused myself by shooting some birds in flight shots.

For the first time, I saw the flycatcher that I have been trying to identify the last few weeks, out in the open on a nice day, where I could have put the Sigma to use, but I had to settle for this.

My photo may not be good enough for an ID, but its song was. It’s an alder flycatcher, now I’ll have to work on getting better photos of it.

Today was the first time that I really put the 70-200 mm L series lens through its paces on a sunny day, and I am starting to see why people rave about the L series lenses so much.

What a quandary to be in, three excellent lens to use, and so little time to use them!

Before today, I had used the 70-200 mm mostly on rainy days, since it is weather sealed, and neither of my other lenses are. I think that’s been a mistake on my part. That lens would never replace the Sigma for birding, and the 15-85 mm does so well on flowers that the only time that I have used the L series lens is for flowers that I couldn’t get close enough to before.

I think that for the rest of this week, the L series will be the only lens I carry with me. It does better on flying birds than the Sigma, is equal to the 15-85 mm for flowers, and does so much better on insects that I am going to give it a real workout. At the same time, I won’t be giving my back or shoulders a workout, and I’ll see if that helps. I do feel better after my walk today than I have felt in a while now.

I have one more photo from today, one that I normally wouldn’t post.

Sorry about the power lines and the house, there was no way to get that shot without them. I didn’t walk up to the tree to identify it, but it is a good example of how well the trees are doing this year. I didn’t get a shot of the cherry trees when they were blooming, which was a shame. So far this year, whenever a species of tree blooms, those trees are covered with more flowers than I can remember having ever seen before. Our native trees have looked like cultivars grown specifically to produce an abundance of flowers.

Before I go off on a rant about the rude cyclists that will run you over if you don’t jump out of their way quickly enough to suit them, I’d better call today’s entry good, and get ready to visit my mom.

Tuesday

I hate getting older, but it beats the alternative, I suppose. The reason that I say that this morning has nothing to do with aches or pains, at least not the bodily type anyway. No, it comes from listening to interviews with supposedly well-educated people who can’t string more than six words together without throwing in a “like” or a “you know”.

I know that every older generation complains about the younger generations, but it isn’t just the younger generation in this case, it’s seems to have spread across all generations in this country, making us sound like uneducated simpletons.

I’d better get off this rant in a hurry, or I’ll end up with like, you know, an entire book on how, like, this country, you know, exalts stupidity, and like, you know, shuns intellect.

And we wonder how we’ve gotten ourselves into the mess we’re in. We listen to news, not for factual information, facts get in the way of what we just know to be true, and would require us exert a little brain power.

It’s wonderfully cool and sunny outside, I’d better go cool off.

Murphy’s law was in full force today. I woke up refreshed, and feeling really good, but I made the mistake of checking out the news as I was drinking my coffee, which led to the rant that I began the day with.

Okay, so I get outdoors, today would be in the running for most beautiful day of the year, any year. But then, I was nearly run down by a cyclist, not once, which is an average day, not twice, which isn’t unusual, but three times, all while I was walking on the sidewalk.

What really burns me about nearly being hit on the sidewalk is that riding a bicycle on the sidewalk is against the law here, and to top it off, there are bike lanes on both sides of the road, so the cyclists have no excuse for being on the sidewalk in the first place.

There’s three kinds of cyclists around here, and they are equally dangerous.

The first kind is the Lance Armstrong wannabes with very expensive bikes, and all the right clothes to wear to make them look like Lance. They’re Hell bent each day to set a record time for their ride, and woe to any one who holds them up, even if they’re riding illegally. I listened to one cuss out a young mother pushing a stroller on the bike/walking path one day, because she was taking up too much room to suit the cyclist. I intervened, and got cussed out myself, but it was worth it.

The second kind is the young males who insist on texting while riding no handed as they weave back and forth across the sidewalk. Most of them have ear buds in their ears and are listening to music as they ride, there’s a couple of them that practice their dance moves as they are riding. Of course they won’t use the bike lanes, they could weave out into traffic and get hit by a car if they did. One came so close to me today that I considered giving him a nudge as he went past me to send him off into the trees, but I didn’t.

The third kind is the elderly riders, often on a tricycle that takes up the entire sidewalk. They won’t ride in the bike lanes, as they don’t want to get cussed out by the Lance Armstrong wannabes for taking up the entire bike lane and slowing them down as they go for the record. I can understand why they ride on the sidewalk, but it still perturbs me when I have to jump out of their way so that they can pass.

And that brings up something else, I must do everything backwards, even go for my walk. After nearly being hit from behind on Saturday by one of three of the Lance Armstrong wannabes riding three abreast on the path, I started keeping count of how many riders passed me from behind, and how many passed me going in the opposite direction. The count was 15 to 3 when I lost track, but that seems about normal. Few of them give you any warning that they are coming up behind you, so there have been a couple of times when I turned right in front of them as they approached me, and I saw something on the other side of the path that I wanted to look at. The ones that do let you know that they’re coming usually wait until they are about five feet away, then yell “Coming through”, which I think they do just to startle the pedestrians they pass.

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, on to the photos from today. Oh wait, they just started the automatic lawn sprinklers here for the first time this year, and I have to check to see if I’m going to get water in through my windows, which are open.

No water hitting my windows, but I have to ask, why are they watering the lawn? It rained last night, and the last I heard, we were eleven inches above our average precipitation for the year then.

Now maybe I can get to the photos. I took only the 70-200 L series lens again today, one thing that I am learning is that it could be very good for shots of flying birds.

I think that by changing a few settings around, that I’ll be able to get some really good shots of birds in flight with that lens. Even if I keep the Sigma at 300 mm, it’s just too heavy to follow the birds with, much like trying to swat a fly with a sledgehammer.

I have to do something to amuse myself, and shooting flying birds is a good way to do so, along with getting more creative, or I should say, learning to make use of the adjustments that the Canon 60D has for me to play with.

That doesn’t look like anything special, but I am very pleased with it because I made wholesale changes to the camera settings to get as much in focus as I did, without any major blow out in the sunnier spots, caught the green reflected off from the water towards the top of the frame, and so on. I should have taken a shot straight up to demonstrate how it would have looked that way. This may not be a special shot, but what I learned while getting it will serve me well in other locations.

I should rephrase that, what I actually learned was to take the time to evaluate what the photo will look like before I press the shutter release all the way, and adjust the camera settings accordingly. That’s what I did with that shot, I pressed the shutter release half way, saw the exposure settings, and then took the time to picture how the photo taken at those settings would look in my mind. I then made adjustments to get the photo to look the way that I wanted it to look.

If any one is interested, I switched from partial spot metering, which I use when shooting birds, to evaluative metering, so that the metering system would read the entire scene. Otherwise, the bright rocks in the creek would have been about all that you could have made out in the photo. I also used an aperture of f/20 to get most of the scene in focus.

Here are my other shots for the day.

That last shot was just screaming for the 15-85 mm lens, but I hadn’t taken it with me. I will tomorrow, which is supposed to be just as nice, because a slightly wider view will bring in even more flowers, and of different colors.

I’m not prone to pain, especially not back pain. I’m not sure if it is because I haven’t been lugging everything with me the last two days, or if for other reasons, but I am feeling much better today. It may be because of the cooler weather, I don’t know.

So, I am going to spend some more quality time with the camera manual this afternoon before work, and when I get home tonight. I am going to come up with better settings for birds in flight, and give them a try tomorrow, and see how well I do.

You know, this is almost like starting digital photography from scratch for me. Yes, I had a digital Nikon D50 for years, but I never could make it function as it was supposed to, so when I came up with settings that would produce acceptable photos most of the time, I left all the settings alone after that, as anytime I changed anything, the resulting photos were crap.

With the Canon 60D, I’m finding that the settings that I do adjust make the changes I intend for them to make, so now I have to learn to take advantage of all that this camera offers.

And just so that you know, despite my ranting here today, it was a great day, and I am really fired up to see what tomorrow brings.

Wednesday

They’re still fooling around with what used to be the tennis courts here, I thought that they were almost done doing whatever it is that they are doing, but no luck. It looks now like they are going to put in playground equipment for kids, but they are sure taking their time and doing it in an odd way. At the rate they’re progressing, it will be done next year, maybe.

Very cool overnight, the last week or so has been very nice overall, it’s too bad it is forecast to get hot and sticky this weekend. I should be out there now, enjoying this cooler air before the heat slams me this weekend. That sounds like a good plan, so I’m off. I’m taking both of the shorter lenses, and starting with the camera set up to shoot flying birds.

I’m back, and I’ll bet that you can guess what happened, can’t you? Yup, I saw a new to me species of bird, which I will get to in time.

First, I set my camera to the servo mode for auto-focus, using all nine focus points. I also bumped the ISO up to 800, hoping that it would give me the right balance between high shutter speeds and an aperture setting to give me some depth of field. I was close.

But birds weren’t the only thing that I practiced on.

I think that I’ll go up to ISO 1000 and switch to the aperture mode, setting that to f/7.1, that should give me the depth of field that I need, and hopefully, the shutter speeds will be high enough to freeze the motion of the birds better. That is, if I try this again tomorrow.

Maybe I’m approaching this wrong, logic would seem to tell me to go with shutter mode, and set the shutter speed high enough to freeze the motion. But then, the aperture would be stopped way down, and I’d lose depth of field, and I think that it’s important to keep some depth of field to assist the auto-focus. We’ll see.

By the way, I deleted about twice as many photos of flying birds as I kept, as those were too blurry to post. But, one out of three isn’t too bad.

Switching all the settings back and forth isn’t as big of a deal as I thought that it would be. The controls of the 60D are well laid out, and easy to set. Not only that, but I can see what I’m doing without my reading glasses even on a bright sunny day like today, which worked out well. Because, flying birds aren’t the only thing I photographed today.

I also shot a few stationary birds.

The crow and the blackbird show will return after this short break.

I heard a bird’s song that I had never heard before, and traced it back to this guy, an immature orchard oriole, which I don’t think that I have ever seen before.

Seeing the black bib on its face told me that this was a new species for me, so I was shooting away to make sure that I got a few good photos. A male Baltimore oriole chased the orchard oriole off momentarily. As the Baltimore oriole left, I got a shot of it in flight, but it’s bad, really bad. That may have something to do with the fact that I was bent over backward while trying to keep it in the viewfinder. 😉 As soon as the Baltimore oriole left, the orchard oriole returned, and began to sing again.

I was wishing that I had the Sigma with me for those! And, I also saw the alder flycatcher almost out in the open again as well.

I’m going to have to train all these birds to sit still for me like the red-winged blackbird above does. I need time to change lenses and camera settings.

Now we return you to the Crow and blackbird show.

You can’t see it in the third photo because they are both black birds, but the crow was fighting back whenever the blackbird got close. I think that the crow got in a good jab with its beak while the blackbird was making one of its passes, as the blackbird gave up the attack and flew off.

That’s it for today, now I have to decide if I’m going for flying birds tomorrow, or bring the Sigma and go for the flycatcher and orchard oriole.

Thursday

Today was pretty much a bust, I did about everything wrong. After reviewing my photos from yesterday, and giving it much thought over night, I decided that I would take the Sigma lens today, set it at 300 mm for flying birds, and leave it there for those shots.

I guess taking the Sigma wasn’t a mistake, for the first bird that I spotted to photograph was an indigo bunting singing from the top of a tree. So, I reset just about all the settings on the camera, and got photos like this.

The next bird, a female red-winged blackbird that refused to fly, so I had to again switch everything over to the perched bird settings for this.

Switching back to the bird in flight settings, I spotted the male meadowlark closer than what I had ever been before, so once again I switched to the perched bird settings for these.

I would have thought that 1/800 of a second would freeze the motion of a bird’s wings, but obviously I was wrong. I was wrong about so many things today, as usual.

They had just finished mowing the grass in the park, that normally attracts birds that come to feed on the insects stirred up by the mowing, but not today. I ended up switching to the action settings, only to have to switch back to stationary settings for shots like this.

As I was taking a break, I saw one of the red-tailed hawks come swooping out of the tree that they have their nest in across the street from the park. Today, it came to me why I see the hawks circling to the south of the park all the time, and why they never expand the circles to over the park itself.

At the apartment complex where I lived until last fall, I got many close-ups of hawks because they would use the updrafts created above the parking lots to gain altitude. Well, the funeral home that I mentioned in a much earlier post this spring is just to the south of the park where I walk now, and the hawks are using the updrafts above that parking lot to gain altitude.

Even though the light was poor, I shot a number of photos anyway, just to check out my bird in flight settings, and those settings for the Sigma lens suck! In fact, I hate to admit this, but the Sigma lens just plain sucks for any bird in flight photos for the most part, it’s just too big and heavy for most action shots. And for some reason, sensor noise from higher ISO settings becomes very objectionable when shooting birds against a blue sky with that lens, much more so than with the L series lens for some reason. I would have thought that ISO 800 would produce the same results no matter which lens was on the camera, but once again, I was wrong.

Just to prove what a complete idiot I can be, I tried to shoot swallows in flight.

Makes sense to me, try photographing a species of bird that is extremely difficult to get a good exposure of when they are sitting still, while that species is in flight, using a very heavy lens, and trying to keep the birds in the viewfinder. Yeah, right.

The Sigma is best saved for these shots.

Today was the last of the nearly perfect weather for a while, it’s forecast to get hot and humid for the next week or so, darn, I was just getting used to this.

Friday

Being both stubborn and foolish, I don’t give up easily. What’s that definition of insanity that people use quite often, doing the same thing over and over and expecting the outcome to be different? Maybe that applies to me. I am thinking of giving the Sigma one last try for shooting birds in flight. I won’t really be doing exactly what I did yesterday, I’m going to tweak the camera settings to see if I can make it work. This will be my last attempt with that lens, famous last words.

Gas prices have been dropping like a rock this week, just in time to convince people that it will be safe to travel over the Fourth of July weekend. And, since it is going to be the hottest, most muggy week of the year so far, I think that I will take advantage of those lower prices and take a trip to Muskegon on Sunday. I’ll do a little birding early, then spend the afternoon somewhere near the water where it will be a little cooler.

Speaking of cooler, I’d better get going before the heat really begins to build today.

I set out intending to try shooting birds in flight, but before I made it out of the parking lot, these caught my eye.

The flowers were on a bush tall enough for me to see over the privacy fence that surrounds the apartment complex, and had very large leaves, I’ll get better photos soon.

I did shoot a couple of flying birds, but I’m only posting this one.

As you can see, there was a milky white sky today as a result of the building humidity. It would have been a great day to photograph flowers, but for two things. One was the wind which was very strong, blowing in the hot, humid air. The other was the fact that the county had mowed down most of the wildflowers along the edges of the trail and sidewalk.

Between the sky, and the mood that I was in, I didn’t hold out much hope of any good bird in flight photos, so I changed settings and tactics, and went after perched birds.

The wind was so strong that the meadowlark had to use its wings for balance to prevent itself from being bucked out of the tree it was perched in. I’ve been forgetting to mention it, but there are now young meadowlarks around, and the male tends to stay perched watching over his brood as they feed in the field, which is how I am getting closer to him now. I’ve tried to photograph the young, but they disappear completely in the grass of the field.

As I was on my way back, and deep in thought, this guy came bounding out of the woods to pose for me.

I have decided to stick relatively close to home over the Fourth of July weekend. As much as I would love to head off up north somewhere, I’ll wait for my vacation to do that, and do it right.

I have decided to take my vacation in the fall when it will be cooler and less crowded, I still haven’t decided where yet.

I have decided to continue to live like a pauper for the time being, as there are too many things that I see myself purchasing, not right away, but in the not too distant future.

I’d like one of the Canon 300 mm prime telephoto lenses to use while walking around and for birds in flight. The Sigma is an amazing lens, being able to pick birds out of the leaves of trees as it does, the photos above speak to that very well. But it’s too darned heavy for photographing birds in flight, as much as I hate to say that. Carrying the L series for two days brought that home to me. But, the L series lens is a little too short for what I want to do.

I thought about a 1.4 teleconverter to use behind the L series lens, I could afford that now, but that would slow down the auto-focus, the last thing that you need for shooting action shots, and it still wouldn’t be what I want. I keep bouncing back and forth on the teleconverter, it would come in handy behind a 300 mm prime lens as well, maybe even behind the Sigma. Wouldn’t that be something!

Well, enough babbling, time to get ready for work.

Saturday

It’s officially summer now, isn’t it? I think that I heard rumors to that effect. How time flies when you’re having a good time!

Speaking of that, some of my high school classmates are having an informal 40th year reunion tonight, not that I’ll be attending.

Hot and humid, as predicted! I wanted to travel light, so I took just the L series lens with me. That was another mistake, in a way. I had a few chances for bird close-ups, but the 200 mm maximum length of the L series wasn’t enough, as you will see.

Oh, that reminds me, I have figured out that what’s been bothering my back and shoulders isn’t the weight, it’s the way that I have distributed it. I carry half the weight of my gear on my right shoulder, the other half on my left hip. Apparently, this is causing me to walk somewhat like John Wayne, and it isn’t good for my back muscles. I’ll try a new arrangement tomorrow when I go to Muskegon. I want to be able to carry all my gear comfortably.

And, that reminds me of something else I wanted to mention. Wisconsin has been hammered with rain the last two days, over 6 inches in places. Much of that rain will end up in the Mississippi watershed, but some will be added to the levels of the Great Lakes.

The reason that popped into my head was that parts of that rain system were breaking off from the main core, trying to cross Lake Michigan, and we did get a few sprinkles last night. Since it looked like it could rain again at any time, I took a rain jacket with me, another reason that I didn’t carry all three lenses.

No, I don’t have a problem staying focused, why do you ask?

I keep saying that serious birding is done for the summer because of how thick the leaves are everywhere, I should know better than that.

How I wished I had taken the Sigma! Except, it probably wouldn’t have been on the camera at that time, because the filter sunlight was great for flowers.

Anyway, I spotted the bunting, and he and his mate were carrying on, trying to lead me away from their nest.

I a repeat of something that happened last week, a grey catbird arrived on the scene to see why the buntings were carrying on so.

I never knew that they were such curious birds before, but last week when some sparrows were making a racket, I saw a catbird trying to see why, and now this week, the same thing happened nearly a mile from the first incident while the buntings were going crazy, so I doubt if it was the same catbird in both instances.

That’s funny in a way, catbirds stay hidden in the brush 99% of the time as if they wanted privacy, yet this is twice now when I have seen them come to the sounds of other birds raising a ruckus. I suppose that the catbirds just want to know what’s going on in their little world.

I did take advantage of the good light for shooting flowers as long as it lasted.

In the park, a couple was setting up very elaborate decorations for a wedding reception that was going to take place in the afternoon, and they had hanging baskets of these as part of the decorations.

I also got a dragonfly and butterfly…

…but another piece of the storm in Wisconsin moved overhead, the clouds thickened up to ruin the lighting for the rest of my walk, even though only a drop or two of rain fell.

This is very long already, and I have things to do as far as getting ready for tomorrow, making supper, and going grocery shopping, so this is it for the day, and the week.

Thanks for stopping by!

June 22, 2013 | Categories: Birds, Flowers, Hiking, My Week, Nature, Photography | Tags: Birds, Flowers, Hiking, Nature, Nature photography, Photography, Photos | 21 Comments

My week

Sunday

The great weather continues, I could get used to this! The rain forecast for this afternoon has been taken out of the forecast this morning, so I’m in no rush to head outdoors, yet. I’d like to stop sneezing and blowing my nose every five minutes before I step out the door. That may not happen today, so perhaps I should fill my pockets with tissues, and brave the pollen.

It’s been tough, but I’m coming to grips with the fact that I can’t just chuck everything, quit my job, and spend the summer travelling around the country seeing the sights, and photographing them. I may not have a lot, but what I do have is nicer stuff, and I have to face the fact that I like living with nicer stuff. It’s nice to think back to my younger days when I would do something that’s really rather silly, like quitting a job on a whim, just to get an extended vacation. I didn’t have anything back then, so that was possible. As a buddy used to say, “If you can’t be ready to move in half an hour, you’ve got too much stuff”. Well, I’ve accumulated too much stuff to do that any longer, and I did so for a reason. I like having good, comfortable furniture that actually goes together, rather than second or third-hand junk that nobody wanted any longer. I like using a quality fly rod, even if I don’t get to use it as often as I would like. The list goes on and on.

So, it’s been time for a reality check.

Well, I had forgotten that I was up almost two hours earlier than normal, so even though I was in no hurry to start my walk, I was actually earlier than normal. Good thing to, for it was much warmer and humid than it has been this last week. When I get done with my walk and put my reading glasses on to begin working on this, they steamed up, it must be warm outside!

Looking through my photos from today, I think that I’m on to something. Back at my old apartment, there were the ponds where I could shoot geese chasing herons one day, herons chasing geese the next, on occasion swans chasing everything, and the mallards being mallards. I haven’t found any ponds similar to those within walking distance of my new apartment. I think that’s why I feel in a rut, there’s little action to be photographed. Yeah, and let’s not forget the turkeys fighting, the hawks soaring overhead or allowing me to accompany them while they hunted, and all the other things I used to see.

Here, it is birds…

…or flowers…

…and maybe an occasional Tom Turkey displaying.

Maybe it’s that I’m not looking hard enough to find what there is to be seen?

At the old apartment, I started taking my camera with me to photograph the beautiful flowers there, then the birds that I saw, then the action around the ponds came last going in chronological order. I’m not sure that the same thing will happen here, for one thing, no ponds, for another, a lot more human activity.

That may sound strange, I used to walk the apartment complex itself, now I’m walking trails and a park. But, in the old apartment complex, other than in the parking lots, there was no human activity. There was one other guy who walked the complex for his health, that’s it. Every one else sat inside except for the time spent going to or from their vehicles. To the wildlife, it was almost as if there were no people there.

Here, the park has many people walking, jogging, or cycling on a daily basis, you’d almost think that the wildlife would get used to it, but it doesn’t, it never does.

Anyway, my other two photos from the day, other than flowers, which have already been posted.

That little guy or gal was hungry, and wasn’t afraid to let the world know it. I could hear the squawks from a distance. I would have gotten a better photo, but the wind was blowing leaves around so much that it was hard to get a good photo, and I didn’t want to prevent its parents from feeding him/her.

Monday

Cloudy, cool, but humid, with scattered rain showers today, it will be a day to carry just the medium lens, and most likely, few photos.

I wish that they would hurry up and finish whatever they are doing at the tennis courts here, they fooled around all last week, most of the time there was nothing going on. Promptly at 7 AM this morning, I was jolted awake by the sounds of them ripping up more of the pavement that is the tennis courts. Good thing that I went to bed early so that I was going to be up about that time anyway. Like any of you care. 😉

Anyway, time for a walk, or is it a hike? The dictionary defines a hike as a long walk, but how far is long? I go three miles everyday, does that count as a hike, or should I add a category for walks rather than hikes? What about the 5 to 6 miles or more that I walk on weekends? Does it matter that my main goal these days is photography while walking, rather than the walk itself? Just killing time while I finish my coffee, I’m off.

One of those glorious bad weather days! Since it was either misting, raining, or waiting for the next round of either to begin, there were no people in the park today, and that always brings the birds out in force.  In fact, I noticed many territorial squabbles taking place. I have to wonder if that’s because birds that don’t “live” in the park move in when there’s no people, prompting the “resident” birds to chase off the intruders?

Even though the weather was terrible for photography, I did shoot a few, which have been whittled down to two.

I knew that it was dark and cloudy, but the shutter speeds I saw while trying to photograph things were unbelievably slow, too slow for a quality photo. In fact, while in the wooded areas of the park, I was having a difficult time even identifying common birds, they all looked black in the gloom for the most part.

I think that the unidentified fledgling object from Sunday was a baby Baltimore oriole, as I saw a mother oriole feeding her young today, and they were very similar to the UFO.

There’s also a yearling male Baltimore oriole that has been singing constantly for weeks, hoping to attract a mate, which seems to be all in vain, as he was singing even more today than is usual. I know that it’s a yearling oriole, as he is much lighter than the fully grown adult males. I feel sorry for the poor guy, he was singing his heart out today.

That brings up something else I need to mention. In the late winter/early spring, sunny, warm days get the birds singing, by early summer, it’s cool, cloudy days when I hear the most songs. Again, that could be related to the human activity in the park, but I don’t think that’s the only reason. That seems to hold true everywhere.

Something else that made today very enjoyable besides the birds and their songs, the wild roses are in full bloom, so the air was filled with the scent of roses for the majority of my walk today. How could any one ask for anything more?

The weather forecast for the next eight days calls for at least a chance of rain for six of those days. That’s about the same as it was last week, and I only got rained on while walking once, most of the rain came in the afternoon and evening. We’re not getting that much more rain than we do normally this time of year, but it is coming as light steady rains most of the time, rather than a quick dump of the same amount of rain from a thunderstorm.

That’s keeping everything incredibly green this year, and lush as well. Not only that, but the Great Lakes water levels continue to go up. They’re still lower than average, but they’ve risen nearly a foot so far this year. That’s an almost unbelievable amount of water in just a few months. I’m not completely sure of my numbers, but that’s in the neighborhood of 4 trillion gallons of water added to the three largest of the Great Lakes, Superior, Michigan, and Huron.

That’s it for today, time to visit my mom in the nursing home.

Tuesday

The sun was just starting to burn through the fog left from overnight as I began my walk today, it was also the warmest it has been in some time, or maybe it was the humidity. All in all, for the first part of June, not bad.

I didn’t get the photos I wanted, but I did manage a few. I’ll explain as I go.

With the return of nicer weather, there were a quite a few people in the park by the time I got there, mostly young mothers who bring their kids to the park to play on the playground equipment there. They don’t seem to bother the birds much, since they stay in one spot.

The guy who owns the land that borders the park to the west was mowing the woods, or trying to. I heard his brush hog hit something much larger than it was designed to handle, the tractor stalled, and much cursing followed.

I did shoot a few photos of some of the more common birds, even though they were good, I’m not going to post them, except for this male cardinal yawning.

It must have been nap time!

I got to where the creek exits the park to the west, and was standing there enjoying the scent of the wild roses in bloom, a catbird singing, and watching a downy woodpecker while considering whether to try for a photo or not. A couple of sparrows started carrying on in the brush along the creek, I could just make out motion in the brush from time to time. I don’t know if they were fighting, mating, or fighting off a predator, but they were making a huge commotion! The downy woodpecker began chattering like crazy, and the catbird flew over to see what the heck was going on as well. I seldom see other species react to the noises made by another species like that. Sorry, no photos, and I never did figure out why the sparrows were going crazy in the first place.

I walked upstream along the creek to the bridge on the east side of the park, then turned around and walked the width of the park going downstream as I always do. I saw a male rose-breasted grosbeak in the brush, worked my way around until I had a clear view of it, but it was in some dense shade, so I didn’t shoot a photo. I was hoping to catch it in the sun as it looked for lunch, but no luck, and no photo, as it took off right after that.

A brown thrasher then landed in almost the same spot the grosbeak had been in, and began to sing softly. I had a clear view, got a focus lock on it, but it was just too dark, so I waited, hoping that he would move into a sunnier spot. Instead, the catbird landed about ten feet above the thrasher, and began belting out his song louder than I have ever heard one sing before, as if to challenge the thrasher to a singing duel. Talk about hearing some wonderful birds singing! Unfortunately, it didn’t last long, the thrasher’s mate flew off with a beak full of food for her young, and the male followed her. The catbird continued at full volume for a few minutes, but with the competition gone, he went back to looking for food.

So, what did I get photos of? A squirrel enjoying lunch.

And a grumpy robin looking for its lunch.

I got back to the top of the hill at the entrance/exit of the park, and sat down to take a break in the shade to cool off. I also had the daily debate with myself whether to switch to the short lens and shoot flowers on the way back home, or stick to the Sigma in case I saw birds. The short lens lost, as I have been seeing a warbler that I haven’t identified yet, and a very long-tailed sparrow along the trail from the park to the road. But I did shoot these two while taking my break.

There are dozens of the rose bushes in the area, their scent is heavenly! I need to work on my wider shots, I am so used to doing close-ups that I am having trouble capturing how pretty the meadows are with all the wild flowers blooming, and the red leaves from the small trees. But, this is the best I’ve done so far.

I didn’t see either the warbler or sparrow on my way back, but I did see a family of chickadees.

I missed a photo of mom and dad feeding the young ones, but it was still fun to watch. The only photo I cropped was the last one.

My last shot of the day.

There’s more rain in the forecast for late tonight into tomorrow morning, it’s going to look like a rain forest around here soon if this continues, and that’s not all bad.

Wednesday

Cloudy, warm, and muggy, with rain on its way soon, so I’d better get moving.

A light rain started falling just as I walked out the door, which means I saw a lot, but photographed little.

As I was getting ready to head out, I switched from the Sigma to the 70-200 mm lens, and I asked myself why as I was doing that. The Optical Stabilization of the Sigma is so good, that its performance in low light is better than the shorter lens. It really wouldn’t have mattered which of those two lenses I took, I should have brought the 15-85 mm if I had been smart. It would have been a good day to photograph flowers with the correct lens. I did shoot a few as you will see later, but the short depth of field on a day like today severely limited how I could compose even flower photos.

I did see the very long-tailed sparrow out in the open, as it always goes when the light is so bad that a photo is impossible. I still haven’t identified it yet though.

I have attributed the fact that I see more birds on rainy days to there being fewer people out and about, but that’s only a small part of the reason. It doesn’t matter where I am, I can be out in the middle of nowhere, with no one around for miles, and I still see more wildlife of all kinds in a light rain than at any other time. There’s no better time for wildlife watching than during a light summer rain as far as I’m concerned, wildlife photography is a different story. 😉

I may have to engage in some trespassing, something that I don’t normally do. The plot of land at the corner of the apartment complex, where there’s the foundation of an old farm-house and the ruins of what I think is a barn, is just full of flowers, both wild and domesticated. I found this flowering bush there, I don’t know what it is, other than beautiful.

I’ll investigate further tomorrow.

A little farther down the road where these.

From its scent and flowers, I would say that it is in the viburnum family, but I don’t know if any members of that family produce flowers in spires like that though.

Speaking of scent, here’s another flowering bush with an amazing scent.

I know what we used to call it while grouse hunting, but that name isn’t fit for a family blog. Grouse love the berries those bushes produce in the fall, but trying to walk through the thick growth and get a shot at a fast-moving grouse was close to impossible. But, I digress. The scent from the flowers is a lemony floral one, and on a damp day with little wind like today, that scent filled the air, even overpowering the wild roses.

You would think that with all the rain we’ve had this spring that the mushrooms and other fungi would be everywhere, but so far this year, I have seen very few.

It could be that as thick as the plant growth is this year that I just can’t see the fungi, even if they are present? Or could it be that I’m too busy looking for birds?

Speaking of birds, I saw two that I’m not sure that I have ever seen before. But, that’s hard to say for sure since the light was so bad today. It also could have been that they looked darker than normal because they were wet from the rain. One looked like a warbler, the other, a very small flycatcher, but I can’t say for sure.

Getting back to the apartment complex, I found this squirrel strolling across the street.

The only reason for the photo was because the squirrel was just walking, which is unusual for them, especially out in the open like that. It must have had tender feet, for as soon as it hit the grass, it went back to bounding around to get where it wanted to go.

One last thing, I decided yesterday to make another push towards quitting smoking. It’s too darned expensive, on top of the health issues, and there are too many things I want other than another smoke. I have been holding steady at the current rate that I’m at, as far as number per day, for a couple of months now, which is good. But, now it’s time to cut back even more.

That may mean that my blog posts will get shorter, I find it hard to write without a cigarette burning in the ashtray. Don’t ask me why that is, it just is.

Thursday

Heavy storms overnight, I certainly earned my pay by keeping the rig on the road while fighting winds of up to 80 MPH.

All the really severe storms stayed well south of where I live, and most stayed south of the route that I drive for work, but it did rain here at home, a lot of rain from what I can tell. Almost half an inch of rain after midnight last night, and that’s as the storms were moving out of the area.

That means the next two days will be cooler with lots of bright sunshine, before more rain moves in for the weekend.

Because of the chances for rain, and the price of gas, I’ll probably be staying home again this weekend, we’ll see. The forecast for the weekend isn’t very specific yet as to the timing of when the rain will fall.

If I had taken my camera and tripod with me at work last night, I may have been able to capture some of the spectacular cloud to cloud lightning displays I witnessed last night. That’s something that I’d like to try with my new camera, so if the opportunity presents itself on a weekend, I may have a go at it.

When the price of gas was spiking upwards, on the rumor of production problems at a refinery in Illinois, the gas stations were raising their prices several times a day. Well, the wholesale price of gas dropped 20 cents one day this last week, and two days later, the price at the pump did drop, a nickel. But they’re not gouging us, oh no, not much, at least according to the state.

Tourism is the third biggest industry in Michigan. Every Friday evening during the summer, thousands of people from the surrounding states pour into Michigan to enjoy our forests, lakes, rivers, and beaches. The oil companies know this, they have the tourists right where they want them. What are all the tourists going to do when they cross into Michigan and see the high  gas prices here, turn around and go back home? Not likely, and all the tourists need gas to get back home, so they have no choice but to pay the higher prices here.

If the oil companies jacked up the prices in the surrounding states as much as they do in Michigan, some of the tourists would probably change their plans and stay home to avoid the high gas prices. That would lower the profits of the oil companies, and they’re not about to do that. It’s a game we go through every summer, and many of the holiday weekends during the rest of the year.

Well, enough of that, time for a walk.

I learned a few things today, or I should say that I had a few things that I know, but tend to forget, driven home once again. The first thing is to always check and make sure that what you think you see is what it appears to be.

No, the berry from a mulberry tree had fallen down on the plant below, and I was fooled into thinking it was the bud of a flower.

Earlier I wrote about the teenage Baltimore oriole that’s been trying unsuccessfully to find a mate. Here he is.

And for comparison, here’s a full-grown adult male.

The teenager is much lighter than the adults, and no, he still hasn’t found a mate yet, maybe next year, poor guy.

Many of the flowers had taken a beating in the storms last night, but I saw some that I planned on photographing on my way back home. Bad decision, for the wind came up strong shortly after I started down the hill into the park. I had also seen more mushrooms that I was going to shoot while I had the short lens on, that was a bad idea as well. They were mowing the lawn in the park, and when I got back to where the mushrooms were, where I was going to switch lenses, the mushrooms were gone, victims of a lawnmower, along with some of the flowers. Lesson learned, shoot it when you can, because it could be gone before you know it. So, tomorrow I’m going to start with the short lens, the light will be better at that time as well. Then I’ll switch to birding with the long lens.

I learned that the very long-tailed sparrow I have been seeing is just a song sparrow with an extra long tail, and a slightly different song than the others in this area.

I learned that kingbirds chase hawks.

I learned that other birds like to watch the hawks being driven off.

I learned that my memory isn’t what it used to be, because I had to look up what this flower was, even though I had just posted a photo of them not long ago.

I learned where the nest of a small unidentified bird is.

I saw the bird land, but it was as if it had disappeared, as I couldn’t see the nest with the naked eye. By zooming in on the spot where I had seen the bird, I could just make out the nest, and the bird’s tail sticking out.

I spotted a chipping sparrow in a tree…

…and I thought that it would be a good subject for an extreme close-up…

…and it obliged me by posing.

That’s it for today.

Friday

More great weather! Cool at night, a little warm in the afternoon, but not bad, at least that’s the forecast for the next week as it stands now. I should know better than to trust a weather forecast, it was quite funny yesterday afternoon, listening to a forecast of sunny skies for the day, while driving through rain showers. But, I can always hope that the meteorologists are right for a change.

We received between two and five inches of rain from the storms that passed through this area on their way to the east coast. The water levels in the Great Lakes continues to rise, Superior is up 7″ in the last month and is now 4″ higher than one year ago.  Lake Superior had the second biggest monthly increase in water level ever earlier this spring and is now just 7″ from the long-term average level.

This weather seems to suit the plant life just fine as well, I know that I’ve said that before, but I think that it bears repeating. Michigan this time of year is always green, but this year, it is such a lush, healthy green, even more so than a typical year.

You’d think that all the rain we’ve had, that at least some of the pollen would have been washed out of the air, maybe it was. However, last night as I was driving for work, there were places where it looked like smoke or fog rising from the grass, but it wasn’t either of those, it was pollen coming from the grass along the highways. No wonder my allergies are bothering me more than normal.

I’m back. The plan to start with the short lens and shoot flowers went fairly well, although I learned that there are a few flowers that aren’t open early in the morning. Apparently crawling around on your hands and knees looking for just the right specimen to photograph takes more time than seeing a bird, shooting it, and moving on, as it’s quite late already.

I shot 100 photos, cut that down to 35 of the best, but that’s still too many to insert here, so I’ll just thrown in a couple for the day, and save the rest for another photo dump.

I suppose that I should throw in the one bird photo I took today, just because.

The 15-85 mm lens is an excellent lens, but not for birding. However, that’s the only time when I wished that I had put the Sigma on the camera today.

Since it’s getting late, time for a shower and getting ready for work. One other thing first, a big thank you to Allen of the New Hampshire Garden Solutions blog, by going through the archives of his blog, I was able to ID a few of the flowers today, if I had more time, I could probably ID them all.

Saturday

I broke down and put $10 worth of gas in my Forester on the way home from work last night, as the low fuel light came on while I was on my way to work. I’m sure that I could have made it home, and then back to a gas station tomorrow, but why push it? I filled up in Grayling on Memorial Day on my way home, and then went three weeks of back and forth to work and around town. I love my Subaru!

The weather is cloudy and cool for June, and I can hear birds singing in the woods across from my apartment. There’s also the threat of rain, both this morning and evening, so I’d better take rain gear with me once I get off my butt and get moving. For some reason, I’m finding that hard to do this morning, maybe it’s because I know that I’ll just be walking the same old same old again. Breakfast would help also, so time to buck up, and get going.

Oh, my aching back! I found out today that just walking everyday isn’t that great as exercise. Neither is slinging laundry racks that weigh up to a ton. The real way to get exercise? Photographing flowers. All that bending down, crawling around on your hands and knees, then getting back to your feet with 10 pounds of stuff strapped to you sure can wear you out. It wore me out today. But, I did manage a few good photos.

I did shoot one bird today, can you find it in the verdant foliage?

I’ll crop down so that you can see it better.

In case you haven’t been able to tell from the photos, it was another dark, gloomy day. I had only gotten started on my walk when it began to sprinkle lightly, and that continued for most of the day, it still is for that matter. It wasn’t that warm, but it sure was humid, I had my rain jacket on for a few minutes, but it was too hot for me with it on, so I used it to cover the camera and lens while I wasn’t using them.

I think that you can also see from the last photos just how hard it is to do any birding, a bird could be perched five feet from me, and I’d never see it because of how thick the leaves are this year.

What surprises me this year is that with as healthy as the plants are and the abundance of flowers, there are few insects around, other than mosquitoes and flies. I’ve seen very few dragonflies or butterflies this year, so these have been a rare sight.

Since this is getting long already, I’m going to save the rest of the flowers for another post, and call this week finished. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do tomorrow, it will depend on the weather. As inaccurate as the weather forecasts are for weekdays, they seem to be even worse on the weekends. I have a hunch as to why, but I won’t bore you with that, at least not now.

That’s it for this one, thanks for stopping by!

June 15, 2013 | Categories: Birds, Flowers, Hiking, My Week, Nature, Photography | Tags: Birds, Flowers, Hiking, Nature, Nature photography, Photography, Photos | 15 Comments