This past Friday morning was a very cold but nice February day and I met my friend Arni in the Kawartha Lakes region to spend a few hours taking pictures of a number of different birds. It was a great morning out and I was able to get some decent shots of three species I’d never photographed before, a Pileated Woodpecker, Common Redpolls and Evening Grosbeaks. It was well worth standing around in -20°C temperatures to get three “new ones”.
The Common Redpoll is an amazing little bird that breeds in the North (around James & Hudson’s Bays) and winters in the southern parts of Ontario. Although they can be seen year around we generally only see Redpolls in the winter months. The small size of the Common Redpoll means they have a large surface area to volume ratio which causes them to quickly lose body temperature putting them at great risk of freezing to death. To prevent this from happening Redpolls must eat almost constantly to provide the necessary fuel to keep them warm. They actually have throat pouches that can hold extra food for eating later should food sources become scarce. Their intense focus on getting food makes them quite unphased by people. Redpolls can withstand lower temperatures than any other songbird and their feathers are highly insulative by design allowing them to brave bitter cold spells during which they often fluff their feathers up trapping layers of air around their bodies that act as layers of insulation.
All of the images below were taken using a Canon 1D Mk III with a 500mm f/4 telephoto lens and 1.4x teleconverter creating a focal length of 700mm. The gear was mounted on a Gitzo carbon fibre tripod and Whimberley gimbal head.
The first image is of a male Common Redpoll.
The remaining images are of female Common Redpolls
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Please drop by again in the next couple of days to see images of Evening Grosbeaks, or if you don’t want to miss any blog entries subscribe to the RSS feed by clicking on the orange button at the top right section of this post (in the Follow Scott Martin Photography section). You will then have blog posts sent to your Google reader or any other reader you prefer to use.
Virtually everyone these days seems to have an iPhone in their pocket, or perhaps some lesser smartphone like a Black Berry or Android. Actually this statement isn’t too far from the truth as I read this week that it is predicted that there will be 30,000,000 cell phones activated in Canada by 2013 and that the market penetration of smartphones will increase to 50% by that time (from 32% in 2010). So it seems that soon everyone in Canada will have a cell phone and half of them will be smartphones.
The versatility of smartphones is amazing and they can even be used effectively in nature photography. The camera phones are sporting processors with 5-7 megapixels which rival those of professional DSLR bodies of only a decade ago (I know…. that’s like comparing apples & oranges however the point is image quality is great in today’s smartphones).
So next time you are out for a trail walk, take your iPhone and have fun with it. Talking pictures is far more enjoyable than catching up on your email. Take some bird seed and it wont be long before the chickadees will find you. Put you camera on your wrist, some seeds in your hand and practice your timing to take the picture. The camera phones can focus to very short distances so just snap away.
The technique resulted in this image, taken at Halls Road in Ajax.
Don’t forget to have your camera phone ready when you see the big animals as well, however when you take ‘full frame’ shots of a Moose with your iPhone you are probably too close to the moose. This image was taken on the Mizzy Lake Trail in Algonquin Park.
Taking videos with smartphones is also a lot of fun and certainly helps capture the memories of the day. Here is a friend of mine providing the most expensive perch I’ve ever seen used for taking pictures of Chickadees with an iPhone 🙂
Yesterday morning provided the opportunity to photograph three new bird species; the Pileated Woodpecker, Common Redpoll and Evening Grosbeak. If all goes well they will be posted on the website in the next couple of days. If you want to read new blog posts as soon as they are posted please click the Orange RSS feed button on the top right side of this post. You can then have my blog sent to your Google Homepage, Google Reader or any number of other subscription readers that you prefer.
Now that the recent website changes have been for the most part completed, we can finally start posting some new photographic material!
The Fox Sparrow, Passerella iliaca, is so named because of its rich reddish-brown colour and is one of our largest sparrows 17-19 cm in length. In these south-eastern parts of Ontario the Fox Sparrow is only seen for a week or two every fall as it is heading to the very Northern reaches of the province to nest. It’s a hard to bird to see, not only because it doesn’t stay in this area very long, but it prefers lurking in impenetrable thick brushy habitat where it forages on the ground for seeds, berries and any invertebrates it may find. They are quite aggressive as they scrape the ground for food which is often a noisy process. That along with their unique song makes them one of those frustrating birds you often can hear but don’t see. The Fox Sparrow usually nests on the ground or low in a thick bush and the female lays three to four eggs which she then incubates for about twelve days before they hatch.
The following images of a Fox Sparrow were taken about two weeks ago and I was very pleased to find these birds out in the open and even sitting on a perch. I did include two shots of a Fox Sparrow in their typical position on the ground. When shooting birds on the ground it is very important to get the camera down at the birds level, which often means lying down & getting dirty however the nice low angle makes for a much better image. Of the two ground shots below, one was taken kneeling down while the other was taken lying down. Have a close look at the two shots and you will immediately see which is the better image. So next time you take a picture of anything that’s on the ground remember to get down low yourself. It may be hard work but it’s always worth the effort.
After much investigation, I’ve decided to make a radical change to the website and blog in order to make them function more seamlessly together and also develop a more professional web presence. This change will take place over the next few weeks however as with all websites it will remain a work in progress as we continually strive to make it better. Although the appearance of the website will change dramatically, the ‘back end’ will change even more as we move to a new web hosting company, Bluehost, and re-write the website and blog using WordPress which is a big change from our old template driven flash site. Although the flash site had many advantages and was easy to set up, WordPress offers far more flexibility and the opportunity to build a comprehensive website to best showcase our photography. I stand at the bottom of a huge learning curve, but it is an exciting one. Please stand by as we transition to the new site and any suggestions or comments you may have are more than welcome.
This post is actually the first using WordPress, however all the posts from the old Blogger site have been successfully imported into the new blog….and now to switch gears and see if the image linking works I’d like to show you two little birds from last week’s trip down to Hall’s Road in Ajax. The first is a White Breasted Nuthatch which is a resident of the area who provided a classic Nuthatch pose.
The second shot is of a female Eastern Towhee which are only seen around this area for a week or so every spring & fall as they pass through during their migration.
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