Got any bird pics?
- Thread starter Wadin' Boot
- Start date
No ospreys in our hood, eagles tho. Had our first band-tailed pigeon. Waiting for the blacked-headed grosbeaks. Due up from mesoamerica any day now.
Hummers are busy and like our dryer lint. Don’t put out lint if you use softeners....
Hummers are busy and like our dryer lint. Don’t put out lint if you use softeners....
I saw one today on the Santiam River.
I heard it first.
depending on your budget the Sony RX10 IV is a good bridge camera with fast shutter speeds. It's not great in low light but does a good job on birds in flight that are close to medium. It's really good for landscapes. And you can dumb it down, like I do, to sport mode plus image stabilization to get fast moving shots. I do that because the camera does a better job than me through the viewfinder on figuring on settings/focus/exposure + it corrects for my tremor (that point and shoot would make it really good for kids) It is weather resistant (though won't survive a dunking) and has some great telephoto abilities. It's not particularly heavy, though needs its own bag, and does not have interchangeable lenses, which has its pros and cons. I got tired switching lenses on my old camera, plus on a beach the sand issue is a big one when it comes to lenses, That and more junk in the Kayak than I needed to keep dry. If you want to up the game from there you are pretty much talking big interchangeable lenses on great cameras- Nikons etc, and easily 10X the price of the Sony. (Don't get me wrong, I lust after those huge lenses etc) Hope that helps! Would be curious about others and their setups....
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We get both eagles & ospreys up at Mason Lake. Last year, we had seven eagles and 3 ospreys in the air at the same time. They don't like each other and make quite a racket.
They like to feed in a fir tree by the deck. They drop their leftovers and it does smell by the end of summer. The eagles will pick off the ducks & mergansers that rest on our log boom.
They like to feed in a fir tree by the deck. They drop their leftovers and it does smell by the end of summer. The eagles will pick off the ducks & mergansers that rest on our log boom.
Haven’t seen any yet, but they should be here any time now.
I also like watching them fish and calls they make.
The belted kingfishers were sure busy this weekend. Tough birds, at least for me to get good pictures of. They tend to always be moving when I encounter them and I’m too slow with the camera to get a good shot.
SF
Jim F.
Still a Genuine Montana Fossil
I have since advanced to other Sony mirrorless cameras, but when I started my more serious digital photographic journey I started with an RX10. I still have it and still use it on occasion because it's a more compact "grab & go" and walking around camera.
Divad
Whitefish
I watched a group of diving ducks (I think ring necks) in January get targeted by two eagles. The eagles sat high up on a fir tree and waited, when one of the ducks kept straying from the pack they swooped in. The duck dove, but the two eagles circled just above the water waiting. The duck popped up and evaded them again diving once more. This time the dive was short lived, maybe out of air, resurfacing and succumbing to the talons of one. The two eagles took off down the lake together.
Was quite the display of teamwork.
The osprey are such better fishers that I seldom see the eagles target fish w/o them. Usually they bully the osprey after catching one to drop it.
Was quite the display of teamwork.
The osprey are such better fishers that I seldom see the eagles target fish w/o them. Usually they bully the osprey after catching one to drop it.
I have tried get pictures of kingfishers, but they always move when you start to get close. That call they make sounds like they're laughing at you.
The only times I have got to within 40 feet, I don't have a camera.
Gyrfalcon22
Life of the Party
These are great points! Bridge cameras are a lot fun and cover almost anything you will come across. For ease of travel, they cannot be beat- as Boot points out.
I have a pal who has the crazy Nikon P1000. I think it is 125x optical zoom= 24-3000mm or .48x to 60x in real world viewing. He can shoot things that I cannot with my oversized big telephoto lenses, plus have all the wide ranges down to super wide. The Nikon P1000 is big, heavy and expensive and is the upper end of what I would call a smaller/med sized portable camera, but any good modern bridge camera is highly capable tool.
The advantages with the DSLR and mirrorless systems are there but they are mostly for more control with concentrated emphasis on specific shooting targets -birds in flight for example are hard for most bridge cameras without good practice. Plus, the expense can grow with each added piece.
It is a balance of convenience, weight and space (+cost).
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Not yet, we have a nesting pair that uses a light stanchion at our football stadium yearly. We anticipate their return shortly. Our digital photo classes love photographing them and named them Nachos and Tina.
You might look at the Canon SX 70. It is a bridge camera (Non-interchangeable lens) that can function as a point and shoot, or can be tweaked to to a techy's heart's content. The big plus, the 21-1365 mm zoom lens, so semi-wide angle to 65x zoom, with image stabilization. It's a 20 megapixel camera, so there is good potential for cropping or enlarging images. For action shooting it will take up to 10 images per second. It has wireless image transfer capabilities, and bluetooth for some reason. All that being said, I don't have one. I do often shoot with a predecessor, the SX 50.
Discovered a pair of Bushtits building their “dirty hanging sock-like” nest outside my office window. It’s been a treat to observe them both bringing moss, lichen and bits of leaves to build it. One of them will go inside to place materials, and it looks like someone’s wiggling their toes.
Sorry for the zoomed-in phone photo…
Sorry for the zoomed-in phone photo…
joefromchicago
Steelhead
They are a rather skittish bird. I ran daily by a local lake and one became accustomed to my presence enough to where it would let me run by it if I didn't look too long. An impressive bird,for sure.
They are a fun little bird to watch. I like it when the group descends on my suet feeder.
Love their nests.
Love their nests.
The photos here are pretty incredible.
