A post about three different birds I encountered last week.
1. Least Sandpiper
The first one is a new life bird for me. They’re not uncommon in Central Florida, so I’ve probably seen them before, but I’d never noticed / photographed / identified one. It was along Gator Creek Road in Merritt Island NWR.
Least Sandpiper
2. Bird Band: High, Green =53
Ruddy Turnstones get their name from feeding behaviors: turning over rocks, pebbles, and seaweed along shorelines in search of food. They nest in northern latitudes and migrate to warmer places for the winter. We often spot them visiting here in Central Florida. I saw this one last Thursday on the boat ramp at Parish Park in Titusville and noticed it was tagged.
When I see a tagged bird, I like to search the web and see if I can find any info on it. So I searched for “Ruddy Turnstone green tag =53”, and was reminded that I already knew this one! The second hit returned was a Central Florida Photo Ops blog post from 2019 : https://edrosack.com/2019/10/20/daybreak-bobcat-boar-and-more/. Cool, huh? I’m glad I have the blog to remind me about all these photos I make!
Ruddy Turnstone, Green Tag =53, Parrish Park, March 24, 2021
MK helped me do some more research. She found a U.S. Geological Survey web page where you can report seeing a band. We reported this one and received an automated email promising to forward available info about this particular bird and band. I’ll update this post if / when I learn more. Here’s the photo from 2019:
Ruddy Turnstone, Green Tag =53, Parrish Park, October 17, 2019
3. Genuine Snow Bird
Bird three is also a new life bird for me.
I was a little excited about re-sighting a specific bird and texted Kevin M. about it. He said he though it was cool too. Then he told me about reports of a Snow Goose sighting in Oviedo – only a few minutes away from Central Florida Photo Ops HQ.
Like Turnstones, Snow Geese breed in the Arctic and migrate south in the winter. They aren’t often seen in Central Florida, especially inland so this one seems a little bit lost. It was hanging out with several Muscovy Ducks at a retention pond.
Snow Goose
Snow Goose
That’s all for this week. I’m glad =53 is doing well and I’m glad I saw the other two birds too. Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Take care of yourselves and each other. And when you can – make some photos and report some bands!
Last March at the beginning of the pandemic, I wrote a post called “In the Neighborhood“. It was just a few photos I made as Lynn and I walked cautiously around near home while we tried to figure out the whole lockdown thing.
I don’t really have any profound thoughts I want to share about what we’ve been through since then. I’ll just say I’m extremely grateful we have smart scientists that created safe and effective vaccines in so short a time, and that they’re becoming available to more of us each day. Things seem to be veering back toward normal now.
Anyway, I thought this week I’d follow up with more neighborhood wandering, and post photos of things I noticed on the way. I’ll try to include tips and hints that you can use in your photograpy. This first image looks like an infrared photo, but it’s not. The bright white leaves are from the low morning sun lighting the tops of the trees.
All to myself
We have several varieties of flowering trees here in Central Florida. They only bloom for a short while in the spring so don’t wait too long if you want to photograph them. These lovely blooms are on what I think are Hong Kong Orchid trees, I find it hard to show the beauty with an image of the whole tree, so I moved in close. I like this frame with a single flower isolated against the sky.
Flower and sky
Slow shutter speeds are commonly used for images of moving water. But forcing your shutter as fast as possible is also worth trying. The details it can reveal make the water look like ice.
Frozen Splash
The early morning sun helps in this photo too. Its warm color on the Spanish Moss is a subtle contrast with the sky.
Branches and moss
Okay, a little fun here. I might have made a few small creative enhancements in Lightroom to bring out the hidden scarecrow face.
Knot a Scarecrow
New growth leaves are sometimes called fiddlehead ferns since they resemble the scroll on a fiddle. They’re hard to spot as you walk by.
Fern
More tiny, close wildflower blooms.
Blossom
The woods are very thick around this pool. It’s only a few feet from the sidewalk and looks like it’s been there for many years. I need to be more observant – I only just noticed it even though I’ve passed by it for years. It’s a three frame vertical stitched panorama.
Forest Pool
I crouched down and used the camera’s tilting LCD to frame these cypress knees against the lake in the background. This is a 7 frame focus stack. If you haven’t tried focus stacking, a web search will return lots of info.
Cypress Knees
This last one is also a focus stacked image of some blooms along a trail in Central Winds Park. (Edit: They’re Carolina Yellow-eyed Grass – thanks Dorothy C.)
Wildflowers.
So that’s some of what I saw on photo walks over the last week or so. I hope you enjoyed looking at them and I hope they give you some ideas to try. Thanks again for coming back and and reading my blog. Take care of yourselves and each other. And when you can – make some photos around your neighborhood!
Header image: Down low and close to Howell Creek in Winter Springs.
I know how interested you are in dinosaurs and when I found out that they were invading Orlando, I was disappointed that you couldn’t go see them with us. So I thought I should at least make some photos you can look at.
The gate into the Dinosaur Invasion
I went on a week day so it wasn’t very crowded, but it was a little bit scary being all by myself sometimes with a few of the dinos. This next photo is my favorite from the exhibit. It’s a close up of an Allosaurus mom and I think she’s looking right at me!
Allosaurus close-up
As you probably know, an Allosaurus looks a lot like a T-Rex, but they aren’t closely related. The next picture shows the mom with her babies. I wonder where the Allosaurus grandad is?
Allosaurus family (Jurassic– 155 to 150 million years ago)
The Appatosaurus was a massive dinosaur – about 75 feet long and 30 feet tall. It was a herbivore and could eat hundreds of pounds of plants each day. It’s too big for an exhibit like this one, so they show two of its fossilized bones.
Apatosaurus Bones (Jurassic– 155 to 150 million years ago)
Because they’re small, Bambiraptors are named after the Disney character. Have you ever seen the Bambi movie? These may be small but they don’t look much like a baby deer to me! They walked on two legs, might have been able to climb trees and were possibly covered in feathers.
Bamiraptors (Cretacious– 75 million years ago)
Citipati fossils were discovered in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, and the fossil find included an entire nest and four adults.
Citipati Nest (Cretacious– 84 to 72 million years ago)
Allosaurs aren’t related to T-Rex, but Daspletosaurs are. Its name means “Frightful Lizard”. They stood about 12 feet tall and had very long razor sharp teeth. This one looks like it’s running after me through the bamboo forest!
Daspletosaur (Cretacious– 77 to 74 million years ago)
Heterodontosaurus was a smaller dinosaur – it only weighed about 13 lbs. It had five fingers and opposable thumbs for picking up things.
Heterodontosaurus (Triasic / Jurassic– 200 to 195 million years ago)
Hypsibema is the official state dinosaur of Missouri. Florida doesn’t have an official dino. I don’t think your state has one either, but it needs one!
Hypsibema & Nest (Cretacious– 75 million years ago)
Experts think that the Parasaurolophus used its head crest to make loud bellows.
ROAR!!!
Parasaurolophus (Cretacious– 75 million years ago)
Placerias looks fierce but it was a herbivore. It could use those tusks for defense but also to slice through thick branches and roots.
Placerias (Triassic– 220 to 215 million years ago)
Modern day Crocodiles are related to the Postosuchus. I guess it does look a little bit like the crocodiles and alligators we have today in Florida.
Postosuchus (Triassic– 237 to 201 million years ago)
Quetzalcoatlus was one of the biggest flying animals of all time with an estimated wingspan of 36 – 39 feet! They could probably move fast on the ground too.
Quetzalcoatlus (Cretacious– 70 to 65 million years ago)
Sordes was another flying reptile that could walk on the ground and climb trees. Its wingspan was only about 2 feet – much smaller than Quetzalcoatlus.
Sordes Pair (Jurassic– 155 million years ago)
And here’s our last Dino -the Velociraptor. It’s name means “Speedy Thief” or “Swift Robber”. These carnivores are pretty scary in the movies, aren’t they?!
Velociraptor (Cretacious – 85 to 75 million years ago)
Grandson, I’d never heard of some of these. Did you know about all of them? I hope you enjoyed looking through this. I had fun making the photos and imagining how much you would have liked going with us to see the dinos. Next time you’re here in Florida on vacation, we’ll find some exciting things to do together. We know about a museum we can visit over in Daytona that has a Giant Glyptodont!
Love you!
Grandmom and Granddad
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Here’s a bit more info for those of you that might want to take your kids or grandkids to see this.
Cypress and dark water along the shore from the Lake Rowena Overlook at Leu Gardens
Harry P. Leu Gardens (see this previous blog post and this album on Flickr for more photos) is a botanical showcase for plants that grow well in our Central Florida climate. There’s also a restored 19th century home that’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places and you can tour a portion of the downstairs. It makes for a great photo walk, and the lush vegetation also makes a great backdrop for a Dino Invasion!
These dinosaurs were created by Guy Darrough’s Lost World Studios. They make them life size and as realistic as possible. They looked very authentic to me! If you want to see this exhibit, make your plans quickly. The last day is April 18th.
Thanks to everyone for stopping by and reading my blog. And as always, take care of yourselves and each other. And when you can – visit with your grandkids and make some photos!
I hope you don’t mind a short post today. I’ve just recovered from a sore throat and laryngitis that I somehow caught in spite of all our pandemic precautions. It wasn’t serious and I’m feeling fine now, but I didn’t get a chance to go on any photo excursions last week.
Anyway, I made this image about a month ago in a favorite spot along the Indian River in Titusville.
It was a good morning
It’s on the western shore, just south of Veterans Memorial Park. The light was changing that morning and I managed to make several photos that I like. For this one, I exposed one frame for the foreground and bracketed three more for the sky. I adjusted them in Lightroom and merged all four manually in Photoshop.
Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Take care of yourselves and each other. And when you can – make some photos!
I’d heard some reports of American White Pelicans visiting Lake Davis in downtown Orlando. When MK confirmed they were there, we agreed to meet last Tuesday morning for a walk and a look-see.
White Pelicans at Sunset
They’re winter visitors in Florida and I often spot them at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge over on the coast. I didn’t realize their stops at our in-shore lakes are as common as they seem to be now. In addition to Lake Davis, Wally Jones writes in his blog about a pod of them in downtown Lakeland on Lake Morton.
White Pelicans are interesting. According to this article, they can have wingspans up to nine and a half feet, making them some of the largest birds in North America. And they often feed together in small groups, herding fish in front of them. Here’s a video MK made of this behavior:
White Pelicans on Lake Davis.
The Pelicans were somewhere else during our walk, but MK has seen them since – so if you don’t catch them the first time, it might be worth another visit. Since I missed them that day, I’ll have to cheat a bit and use a photo of one that I made over in Merritt Island last December:
American White Pelican in flight (MINWR)
We did see many other birds that morning including some Mallards:
Drowsy Ducks
Many Wood Ducks:
Dandy Drake
A few Ring-necked Ducks:
Ring-necked Duck
And even a family of these strange looking (to me at least) Egyptian Geese.
Egyptian Goose Family
The Egyptian Goose is native to the Middle East but humans have helped them spread around the world. They’ve been in Florida since the 1960s and as recently as 2009, Florida Fish and Wildlife didn’t think they bred outside of Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. See this article for more info : http://wildsouthflorida.com/egyptian.goose.html.
Lake Davis is a lovely surprise hiding in downtown Orlando and a wonderful place for a walk! This search will bring up other posts on the blog about the area: https://edrosack.com/?s=lake+davis.
Lake Davis Morning
Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Take care of yourselves and each other. And if you (peli)can – make some photos!
The T-Mount system was devised by Tamron in the 1950s to allow their lenses to be used on many different cameras. It’s also the system used to attach a camera to the prime focus of a telescope. I’d never tried it, so I ordered a T-Ring and Sony adapter and gave it a go.
All of these images were made with a Sony A6600 APSC camera mounted on a NexStar 6SE telescope at prime focus using the T-Mount adapter. I captured multiple frames for each and processed them with astro photo capabilities added recently to Affinity Photo.
In prime focus astrophotography, you’re using the telescope as a lens, mounted directly to your camera. There’s no eyepiece involved, although you can insert additional optics into the light path. I used three different configurations.
1. Prime focus, with a Celestron f/6.3 Reducer Corrector. Equivalent focal length = 1.5 x 1500 x 0.63 = 1418mm
In the first image I used a Reducer / Corrector. This both widens the field of view / lowers the focal length, and flattens the field to enhance sharpness at the edges. This worked OK, but did have some obvious vignetting that was hard to deal with in post processing.
Image 2 is the same setup, but straight from the telescope to the camera. There was no vignetting and I think the image quality is very high. The featured image at the top of this post is a crop from this photo. (Note: This one is posted on Flickr and is worth a click to see in greater detail. Click it twice when you get there to enlarge it.)
3. Prime focus with a Meade 2x Barlow lens. Equivalent focal length = 1.5 x 1500 x 2 = 4500mm
And finally, image 3 uses a Barlow lens, which is like a 2x extender. The image quality in this one is not as good. That could be due to degradation from the Barlow, a slight mis-focus, or vibrations / motion (or all three!).
Conclusions:
Check and double check all settings and adjustments.
These are longer focal lengths than anything I’ve ever tried before. Technique is super important and it’s hard to know if you’ve messed up until you get things on the computer later.
The straight prime focus method works very well. The image quality is the best I’ve gotten through the telescope, It’s better than the afocal approach (camera lens through an eyepiece) I used for this post.
The reducer / corrector works OK, but I’ll probably shy away from it unless I need a wider field of view. And if that’s the case I think I’d try using piggy-back photography first.
The 2x Barlow approach is challenging. The magnification makes any focus or motion issues much worse. This should probably be reserved for planets, and used as a second option to straight prime focus or piggy-back with a long telephoto lens.
There is a lot to learn about astro photography!
Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Take care of yourselves and each other. And if you can – make some (astro) photos!
Years ago, Lynn brought a few ferns back from her mother’s home over in Bartow, Florida and transplanted them into our back garden. Since then, they’ve thrived, and a few usually even grow on our brick fence. We noticed last weekend that they’d arranged themselves into a very nice message appropriate for today’s holiday.
Ferns in a Valentine’s Day arrangement on our backyard fence.
I’m a bit unsure if they didn’t get the “E” done in time, or if maybe they were going for the colloquial “LUV”. Anyway, this isn’t photoshopped and unless there’s a stealth gardener we didn’t notice sneaking into our back yard, these ferns grew this way naturally. The odds of something like this happening spontaneously have to be vanishingly small. Maybe it’s more likely nature is trying to send us a message?
Peace and ‘Lov’ to all of you gentle readers. Thanks for stopping by my blog. Take care of yourselves and each other. And today, cherish your valentine!
Well. Kevin M. wanted to meet and photograph the SpaceX launch scheduled for 5:15 am last Friday morning. Talk about zero dark thirty!
Anyway, I was all packed and prepared Thursday night when the launch was postponed. Since I was ready to go, I decided to head over to Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge anyway on Friday morning (just not so early!). I’m glad I did. I got to see a lot more things flying than just a space ship. By the way, if you like to look at photos of SpaceX launches, their Flickr stream is awesome.
With our recent cool, clear weather, I expected few clouds and a so-so sunrise. But this scene with the sun rising below the clouds and centered behind the Vehicle Assemble Building at Kennedy Space Center was pretty.
VAB Sunrise
Gator Creek Road at MINWR has been closed for a while so I was glad to see it finally open again. They’ve been busy maintaining the dirt road surface and trimming vegetation along the sides. You can see a little better now – and you don’t have to dodge potholes! There was a lot of bird action.
A large squabble of gulls (Mostly Laughing and Ring-billed)
Birding is interesting in many ways. For instance, you can always call a group of birds a “flock”. But I think the group names for different bird species are fun. If you’ve ever listened to a big “squabble” like this, you’ll probably agree it’s an appropriate name for gulls. You can also call a gull group a “flotilla”, “gallery”, “screech”, or “scavenging”.
I’m not sure what attracted these huge gatherings to Gator Creek. but they sure seemed to like it there.
A tightly stacked scoop of Skimmers
“Scoop” is a wonderful name for a group of Skimmers too. The classic photo for Skimmers is of a single one feeding just above a calm surface with its lower mandible in the water (like this one). I didn’t see any of that behavior on Friday, but I really liked this alternate flight shot. It’s hard to understand how they fly that close without hitting each other. Groups of Skimmers are also known as a “conspiracy” or “embezzlement”.
On Black Point Wildlife Drive the water was very low in spots but there was still a lot to see. Here’s one more group flight shot:
A fling of Dunlins
I’m a little embarrassed to admit that Dunlin are sort of a life bird for me. What I mean is I’m pretty sure I’ve seen them before, but I find Sandpipers challenging to ID and I’d never consciously done so with Dunlin. I also saw / ID’d some Western Sandpipers on Friday for the first time. Flocks of Dunlin are also called a “flight” or “trip”.
And here’s one last bird photo. This group was a lot smaller than the others. They were spread out and flying around so fast the only time I could grab a collective image was when they settled for just a moment.
A small worm of American Robbins
It looks as though there’s only the one name for a group of Robins. I suppose you could always be boring and call them a “flock”.
If these names interest you, here’s a good summary article on the subject: https://www.thespruce.com/flock-names-of-groups-of-birds-386827 (page no longer on line).
So that was a great visit to my favorite wildlife refuge! In addition to the birds above, I also saw a Bottle Nose Dolphin, Alligators, a Bald Eagle, Roseate Spoonbills, Forster’s Terns, a Eurasian Collared Dove, Brown Pelicans, Turkey Vultures, Ospreys, Ibis, American Avocets, Great Blue and Tricolor Herons, Redish Egrets, Great and Snowy Egrets, and some others that I’m forgetting or (once again) didn’t ID.
Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Take care of yourselves and each other. And if you can – make some photos!
Sometimes you want to get closer / zoom in with your lens to show as much detail as possible but if you do, you can’t fit everything in your frame. When I’m in that situation I try to expand the frame by making a stitched panorama. It’s a common approach for landscape images – but it can also work for wildlife and I don’t see that mentioned very often elsewhere. Here’s a recent example I assembled from two photos:
Pretty in Pink
And here’s one more made from three photos:
A Partial Pod of Pelicans. (Click to see larger on Flickr. Click again to zoom in)
I’ve written about this before, so I won’t repeat myself. If you’re interested in my approach, see these two posts:
And there’s much more info on the web waiting for your DuckDuckGo or Google search.
There is an added complication to watch out for when stitching wildlife panoramas: the animals may move between frames. For that reason, I shoot as quickly as possible. I try stitching the frames together automatically and look for any anomalies along seams. If I find some, then I assemble the panorama manually in photoshop and mask out the issues.
Comet Neowise and the Great Conjuction in 2020 made me think about the telescope I’ve had in the closet for many years. I’m happy with the images I made of those two events, but I regret not trying to use the scope to photograph them.
I’d only ever used it for observing. Photographing through a telescope requires a much higher level of knowledge and technical skill. In addition to knowing how to set up and align the scope and camera, you have to understand and balance many more factors: camera (ISO, aperture, exposure time, focus, …), astro (atmosphere, alignment / tracking, field rotation, …) and post processing. So I thought I’d try a couple of shots to see what it could do.
Earth’s natural satellite. Using a Sony DSC-RX100M3 camera (1″ sensor), afocal through Celestron NexStar6 SE scope and 40mm eyepiece; Thirteen frames, manually aligned in photoshop and blended with smart stack mode median.
I used the moon to get everything set up and tested. Next I wanted to try to photograph a Deep sky object. They’re plentiful, but harder to find or even see. I picked the Orion Nebula as my second target – it’s probably the easiest DSO. Even here in my back yard, Orion’s belt stands out.
Orion Nebula. Same setup as above, using six frames instead of thirteen.
I know these aren’t Hubble level images or even very good amateur astronomer images. But I’m pleased with how they turned out. I want to continue exploring photography with the telescope and see how well it can work in my urban (and light polluted) environment. If I make some progress, I’ll share the images with you.
Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Take care of yourselves and each other. And if you can – make some (astro) photos!
Least Sandpiper
Ruddy Turnstone, Green Tag =53, Parrish Park, March 24, 2021
Ruddy Turnstone, Green Tag =53, Parrish Park, October 17, 2019
Snow Goose
Snow Goose
