Quick Lesson In Bird Feeding Etiquette…

When I was photographing “Myrtle” Yellow-rumped Warblers at the Spring Valley Wildlife Area, I encountered a lot of interesting behavior.  The most interesting behavior of all, however, was behavior that originally had me very frustrated.  I was shooting at 3fps (and the speedlight keeping up…got to love the outboard battery!) and so caught this particular Myrtle hopping around and being annoying, or so I thought.  In looking at the photographs, he was hunting, and I had just witnessed the stalking and killing of the prey, in this case, a smallish wood ant.  I could go on and on about this, but, really, I can’t – besides, it wouldn’t do it justice.  I’ll let the photographic sequence tell the story.  I’ll keep the pithy comments to myself.  Interestingly enough, Photobucket resequenced the photographs completely wrong, so I’ll do my best to reassemble them, here…

See something tasty? Let’s get a closer look… *boing* Hmmm… Yes…food! Mmmm…ant. ANTi-climactic?

So, there you have it.  You’re wondering about the title and etiquette and all that?  Well, the etiquette comes from not disturbing the bird while it’s trying to eat.  You’ll recall the stink-eye I got from the Osprey when I was photographing him and he dropped his fish.  He tried to play it off, but you could tell, he was getting a little crabby about not having his fish…   See you can just tell…he’s trying to play it off, but has THAT look.  This was from LAST year’s tax day trip.  He looks as happy as the rest of us.  However, the lesson here is to not interrupt dinner, just document it.

So, happy birding.  Be sure to get out while the Warblers are busy eating and not caring how many humans are about.  It can be very rewarding, and if you’re lucky enough to have a little slice of the semi-circle of life (I haven’t yet seen an ant eat a warbler…), you’ll cherish it.  I know I will.

Caesar Creek and Spring Valley WA – 4/22-23

There had been a lot of talk about Terns at Caesar Creek, so I thought I would check it out, since I don’t have very many good photographs of the Terns in question.  Well, OK, I have some fantastic looks at a Forrester’s Tern, but not a Caspian, so that was my main impetus.  Well, long story short – as is the way of things, there were very few gulls at all and absolutely no Terns.  That’s OK – I got some good photographs of the Bonaparte’s Gull that was hanging out with the Ring-billeds, and I also got a special treat: there was an Eared Grebe swimming around in lonely circles just off the boat ramp.  I wasn’t able to get as close as I wanted, the first day, and the light was dreadful, so three of the four photos I’ve saved of this beautiful bird are a little dark, but, yesterday, the sun was out and I brought my Better Beamer flash extender and while I wasn’t able to get close, again, I was able to get a single, well-lit and beautiful photograph.  That made me very happy.

On the way back from the boat launch, I spotted a Sparrow that wasn’t holding still, but wasn’t hiding, either.  It also had a yellow swatch across the face.  I thought, “hey, cool!” and sought out my opportunity to get a decent photograph of a Savannah Sparrow.  After about 10 minutes of chasing it down, I did end up with a few great shots.  That makes me happy – they’re cute little birds and I’ve rarely had one sit out in the open enough for me to get unobstructed photographs.  Luck was with me, it seems.

I moved on to Spring Valley Wildlife Area just a little later, and had  some of the best looks at birds I’d had for a while, inasmuch, as the Better Beamer allowed me to illuminate where I otherwise could not have.  This helped me get some fantastic shots of a Yellow-rumped Warbler – unlike any I’d taken before…the detail was so much better.

I think the highlight of the morning, though, was the pair of foraging Pileated Woodpeckers.  They were scuttling along the ground, pounding on the undersides of fallen trees, or along the bases of trees.  It was funny – they would see me, fly about 50 feet away, then go about their business, waiting until I was within a good sight-line, again, then fly a little further up.  They repeated this process a good 6 or 7 times, until finally disappearing into the thicker forest-y part of the trail.  They were funny, though, and it was so tempting to just say, “you’ve got a little schmutz.  Yeah, right there…”

Caesar Creek State Park

What some might start referring to as my home away from home, I spent the last couple of mornings at CCSP taking photographs of birds.  It’s what I do.  It’s what I love.  This past week, I even visited a couple of parts of the park that I hadn’t visited before.  What’s funny is that it provided me with good looks of two birds I didn’t really have good photographs to go with…unfortunately, because of a little experimentation, I still don’t, however…I used the 2x teleconverter.  Oops.  Everything’s a LITTLE soft.  Anyway, here are the fruits of this past week’s labors.

The first really good looks of birds I of which I didn’t have good photographs was the Blue-winged Teal.  These reclusive, squeaky little duck-like birds tend to swim away as fast as they can when anyone approaches, if not fly away altogether.  In this case, I was able to get pretty close and the 500mm telephoto didn’t disappoint, along with the morning’s gorgeous almost-golden light, in providing a couple of very solid photographs of this group of 5 males and 2 females.  While I wasn’t able to catch any of the action of the males chasing each other (they did this twice when I was on the other end of the pond), I still got solid looks.  I don’t think I had every gotten that close during breeding season – their heads are so amazing.  Gorgeous iridescence and that shade of slate blue – they really came out in the morning sun and I was glad to have seen it!

Looking out across the lake from here, I got a decent enough view to be able to ID a juvenile Common Loon swimming roughly 200  yards out.  Basically, it was a head bobbing above the chop every so often.  The photos I got were barely passable for ID purposes let alone for this blog…  <foreshadowing>Thankfully, fate would smile upon me, in a Loony way.</foreshadowing>

I then moved around to the little boat launch area just past the Youth Pond because I had seen something black and duck-like swimming near the “peninsula” – which used to be an island… When I got there, I spooked a Great Blue Heron – who was close to 50 yards away…sissy! – but didn’t manage to scare away the actual quarry: a lone, female Greater Scaup.  She was pretty and she was swimming very slowly away.  Unlike the Blue-winged Teal, it took her more then 10 minutes to get out of good photographic range.  That said, the wind coming off the lake directly into my face made it hard to either focus or hold the camera completely still – even on the tripod.  Still, I got some very good looks and a couple very good photos.  I don’t think I had realized how reddish brown the feathers were on a bird that looks deceptively black-brown from a distance.  Still, she hung around for a while, and I was grateful.

The beach was the next destination, as there had been mention of a Lesser Black-backed Gull hanging out amongst the Ring-billeds.  This would be a life bird for me, so I thought I would check it out.  When I got there, I saw only 4 gulls – all Ring-billed.  Ah, well.  I was a little disappointed, but as I was getting closer to the beach, Spring was confirmed for me, photographically.  You see, I have this thing… maybe it stems from a form of insanity, maybe not – you’ll have to decide.  However, since about 1992 or so, I have maintained that it  is not truly Spring until I see, and hear, an Eastern Meadowlark.  They used to greet me on my trek back from Spring Break to Wabash, right around the Indiana border, and that would seal it for me.  Recently, they’ve been eluding me until much later into Spring.  This, year, however, I saw one on the 5th of April, so, it became Spring. However, I haven’t gotten good photographs of them, EVER, and that was the biggest change, this time around.  This happy fella provided some excellent looks – even moving his head around quite a bit to allow for all you field-mark junkies out there to make all the requisite diagnoses.  Once I got close enough for REALLY good shots, however, he flew to the other side of the lake – something that is impossible to track (even with the monster lens…) with a large bird, let alone one the size of the Eastern Meadowlark.  So, I turned my attention back to the beach – fearing there would not be anything worthwhile since about 5 minutes prior, two motorboats went whizzing through the area where the Loon was and creating a bunch of wake.  That’s when I saw it…

I have never been closer than a couple hundred yards to a Common Loon.  This is evidenced by my displeasingly rough photographs that are barely useful for IDing the birds.  This changed dramatically, as I watched a full-breeding plumage Common Loon swimming *towards* the beach.  At its closest, it was within, I would say, 35-40 yards.  I got some amazing looks.  It was at this point that I noticed  it was going to be very silhouetted and I would have to be careful because it was swimming right to that patch of the water that served as the brilliant sun-reflector and photographer-blinder.  Thankfully, I got some excellent shots of this beautiful bird before it got to a point where it was physically painful to try to focus on any portion of the water where it was swimming.  That said, I still managed close to 10 minutes of quality time with this swimming duck and apparently didn’t spook it, as it didn’t dive once.  It just swam closer and closer, until I think it figured out I was watching, and then just swam further out, slowly, allowing some great looks at the wonderful almost-houndstooth pattern of feathers on its back.  I love Loons – and not just my family.  This was VERY cool for me.

Photo Cataloging and Blindness

Syntactically, "I play by myself," and "I play with myself" aren't too dissimilar.  Their meanings, however, are, at least colloquially, quite different.  Likewise, the phrases "I manage my photographs on my computer," and "My computer manages my photographs," are similar, but can mean two different things.  Either way, with the ill-phrased sayings, the end result is that you might just go blind. 

I have set ACDSee Photo Manager 2009 loose on my system to catalog my photographs.  I wish it luck, as I've gone nearly blind organizing tiny thumbnails of photographs from folder to folder to make sure that the 8.5x11" photographs do not intermingle with the 8x10" ones or that the black and white photographs still have the same heirarchy as do the color photos.  The bottom line is that it's tedious and going through using Windows' meagre image viewer to discern whether a photograph is "good enough" can not only cause your vision to suffer, but your sanity, as well.

So, with that in mind -- do I recommend cataloging your photographs?  Duh.  Do I recommend ACDSee to assist you in cataloging your photographs on your computer?  I do, for the most part.  I've used ACDSee since it's initial release (how scary is THAT?!) and this version, thus far, is much easier to use to keep tabs on photos, as well as filter, arrange and label them.  This isn't a review of the product, though, but it is the software I have tried to use for my photo management, so it's what I'll be talking about.  As to why you would want to use this product or any other, think of it this way -- if you're like me, you take a lot of photos.  The most time-consuming part of the entire process is figuring out which shots to keep and which to throw into the shredder.  Also, if you're like me, you have a LOT of "incoming photos" which need to be further sorted, edited in PhotoShop or what-have-you, and then placed in its proper folder.  With photo management software this is a boatload easier and if you're using one of the Adobe Products (Album, Lightroom), it will do this just as well as ACDSee and it's also intertwined with PhotoShop, so that connection will seem much more seamless.

Since I began writing this entry, two things have become painfully  clear: Vista’s file management code was ripped straight from a Commodore 64’s kernel and ACDSee HATES cataloging more than 5,000 photographs at a time using Vista’s file management code.  It consistently explodes when dealing with the photos and usually dies around the number 5,651.  Sad.  Since this has come about, I sought out Extensis’ Portfolio 8.51.  It’s a solid program as well.  It’s not perfect, either, and can get very frustrating with the amount of room it will take up on your drive should you neglect to turn off the “create thumbnails” feature when generating your catalog.  When cataloging 10.5GB of bird photographs, I really don’t need 1.3GB in thumbnails…really.

So, the bottom line is that cataloging is a very good thing when it works and that it’s very difficult to get a good piece of software to do everything you want it to.  If you have one, great – stick with it.  If you don’t – get one.  It’s not quite as important as a backup program, especially if you already have a fairly organized directory hierarchy, as do I, but still, it DOES make it easier to have a piece of software whereby you can assign keywords and search on photo requirements.  I’ve rambled on long enough, and I hope a point has been made.  Until next time….