Triple Play

Even though I didn't set out to go birding today, I ended up with a nice trifecta of raptor photo opps. It all began as I was drinking coffee and reading the sunday paper with G.J. on my lap, letting momma sleep in. The feeders were busy as birds were re-fueling after a frigid night (near 0° F at our casa.) Then a Blue Jay gave its loud, high, triple staccato alarm call, birds scattered, and a Sharp-shinned Hawk eased through the yard. Getting nothing on its initial pass, it settled in on the back fence to see if it could get a dumb House Sparrow to bolt out of a blue spruce. The light was pretty good, so I grabbed my DSLR and went out back to see if I could get anything. After taking some shots from the part of the back patio that I had shoveled, I realized that the light would be much better from around to the south. This meant walking through untracked ankle-deep snow in my slippers (plus I was only wearing my sweats in the now 10° F temps.) But oh, well- sometimes you have to put comfort aside to get the killer shot. Anyway, it let me get pretty close, with some dramatic shots showing that sanguine eye. I think it might have been waiting to see if I would flush anything out. Eventually a bird made a dash out of the yard with the Sharpie on its tail- I didn't see the outcome after they dropped behind my fence but I have the feeling that the score was Sharp-shinned 1, House Sparrow 0.
So with the sunny day and snow on the ground, I decided to drive around some looking for raptors- the snow gives a good light bounce, lighting up the birds well from underneath. I went by a stretch of road where a dark-morph Harlan's Hawk has been frequenting, but I couldn't find it. Blazing by another intersection farther south, though, my attention was arrested by a dark, and I mean coal-black-dark, buteo on a power pole. Not one of those rufous birds (cool as they are), but a Black-Hawk-black hawk, if you get my meaning. I turned around and did a few drive-bys before finding a reasonable position to shoot out my driver's side window. The bird tolerated me for a little, and then flew up into a tall cottonwood. I drove by the bird again, parked a bit to the south, and walked up towards the bird with the sun at my back. As I got closer the bird screamed a few times and then took off. Amazingly, instead of flying away or even tangentially skirting around me, Blackie quartered towards me! I was having trouble keeping the bird centered, hoping I wouldn't blow it, wincing inwardly each time I heard the shutter fire with the image of wingtips getting cropped, but with the miracle of 5 fps bursts I managed to get some in the frame. I thought it would turn out to be a dark Harlan's Red-tailed, but it is actually a dark-morph calurus (Western subspecies). I wasn't sure if the pale, unbanded undertail was OK for calurus, but the lack of any white on the breast and the red dorsal tail surface all point to the Western subspecies. Thanks to Tony Leukering, Chris Wood, Jerry Ligouri, and Brian Wheeler for the ID confirmation. (Unsolicited plug- if you like hawks you have to get one of Brian's raptor ID books and Jerry's book, Hawks from Every Angle!) These guys are even rarer than a Harlan's around here, and these are the first good pics of this form that I've gotten. It is a very dramatic bird:
So now I was utterly happy with my day's raptor photo tally, but I thought I'd cruise the roads north of Boulder Reservoir before heading home. Multiple prairie dog towns and abundant open space in this area makes it a pretty good winter raptor resort, and today didn't disappoint. This Prairie Falcon was keeping vigil from a power pole alongside the road. As I watched the bird it took off, flew away, but then turned parallel to the road, giving some neat side-on flight shots. About half an hour later, I re-found the bird finishing off a meal on another pole. Great news for me- sated raptors like to stay put, and can be very cooperative for photos. The mega close-up is digiscoped from almost underneath the bird. Neat way to finish off the day's shooting.

More Boulder County Listing Madness

As if the Yellow-billed Loon wasn't enough, another species new to the Boulder County list arrived last week. Ted & Hannah Floyd were walking around McIntosh Lake in Longmont on November 26 when they spied a Brown Pelican hanging out with some late American White Pelicans. Ted had the goodness to call me- I happened to be out walking with my own youngster, Garrett. Well, since I was only seeing Rock Pigeons at my current position, I hustled back home, jumped in the birdmobile, and drove up to McIntosh. Sure enough, on the far shore there was a brown lump amongst roosting gulls and white pelicans. After a while, a head with a long yellow bill emerged from the lump as the Brown Pelican decided to preen a bit instead of just sleeping. I shot some stills and videoscoped the bird from prohibitive range (about 1/2 a mile across the lake) before heading around to the north side where the bird was resting. Of course, right as I was showing up there a Bald Eagle flushed everything off the beach, but on a hunch I set up my scope and camera anyway. Sure enough, Brownie circled the west end of the lake and headed back. I somehow found it in flight and videoscoped it coming in for a landing.

The Brown Pelican is almost certainly the same bird that has been hanging around Northern Colorado this summer and fall- it is a sub-adult that had been spending most of its time in the Loveland area (Larimer County) but has also been seen in Weld and Morgan Counties. Truly a county-lister's delight- a very rare bird that shares the wealth. After a sub-zero low in Longmont last night, though, I suspect the thing will either come to its senses and get out of town or end up as eagle chow.

Lake McIntosh has kind of been a disappointing place every time I visited it until this week- I hadn't seen much besides a few un-noteworthy gulls and waterfowl. Well, that has changed! Bill Kaempfer alerted folks that the place was hopping after he surveyed it for the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory's Early Winter Waterfowl Count. Seems like the shad have peaked, and there is a daily feeding frenzy of 1000's of gulls and mergansers and a dozen+ Bald Eagles. Plus a small group of Sandhill Cranes has headquartered there for at least a week, giving folks a chance to see a species that otherwise is usually just a flyover bird in the county.

Ever the larid-lover, Tony Luekering worked the gull flock after ticking the BRPE and found a very interesting young gull that has traits consistent with Slaty-backed. Exciting stuff, but the bird has proven difficult to study or photograph well, and its true identity may remain in question. Danged immature gulls! Anyway, even if it doesn't get any more status than a maybe or what-if bird, it was fun going on the chase again. As long as some open water remains this should be a good gull spot- already in addition to the Slaty-backed-thingy Gull there have been a Mew and several Thayer's Gulls spotted amongst the Ringers, Herring, and California Gulls there.

Videoscoping

At long last I have Yellow-billed Loon on my Boulder County (Colorado) list! More importantly, this is the most cooperative YBLO I've seen, observable at times from within 100 yards (with the resultant good photo opportunities.) It has been on Erie Reservoir for three days now, first reported by Walter Szeliga the morning of Thanksgiving Eve. This lake is only about 300 yards wide, and with the bird often hanging out within the southern half, the winter sun coming from behind us, and an elevated trail to set up on, viewing can be excellent. When I saw it on Nov. 22 photographic conditions were a bit challenging, with a pretty stiff wind whipping things up and the loon moving around actively. The waves in some of the shots were pretty dramatic, though (as long as I was focussed on the bird, not on a wave crest...) Out of over 400 digiscoped shots I ended up with a few keepers- here are my favorite two from day one:


Today (Nov. 24) was a different story- the wind was light and the bird was taking it easy. In about two hours of observation it only dove for one brief period, catching sizable prey and swallowing it. For the rest of the time the bird lazed around, appearing to sleep when it wasn't preening. The bad news was that the bird didn't get as close as it did two days ago in the wind, but after a while it was well within good digiscoping range. After shooting a bunch more stills, I got the idea to try shooting some digiscoped video- what would you call that, videoscoping? All I can say is gee, why didn't I try this before? I just kept everything the same on my digiscoping rig and switched the camera to video mode.

It appears as though YouTube compresses the video quite a bit so it doesn't look as clean as I'd like. Good news is it streams pretty well on most reasonably fast connections. If you have fast internet service you can try this link to a better version, although it is about 6 MP. The original is the best, but at 82 megs you'll have to come on over to see it.

Here are a couple of stills from today.

Notice the pink webbing on the foot- sweet, huh? Reminds me of the yellow webbing on a Wilson's Storm-Petrel foot. Know of any other birds with brightly colored webbing but dark toes?

Unfortunately, the bird appears to have an injury on the lower right side of its neck. Maybe it was injured by an eagle, or maybe got a fishing hook gouge? Both times I went to see the bird it seemed to be spending a lot of time preening, especially its neck. Today Brian Gibbons and I also noticed that it was keeping its right eye closed a lot, even when it seemed to be awake. It can open its right eye, but perhaps the neck injury is bothering that eye as well? Whatever the case, hopefully Erie Reservoir will provide the food and rest the bird needs before it ices up.

Tweaking my Digi-Schmoking Rig

Update: I'm now using the Leica C-Lux 2 camera. Other than re-positioning my cable release, everything else works the same with my digiscoping rig as described below...

Earlier on this blog, I described my digiscoping rig improvements- well, I had to go and improve upon my improvements a little. Really, there was only one thing to tweak, and that was the cable release attachment point. I had just forced the threads into a 1/8" hole in the thin aluminum bracket, which worked OK for a while, but it was getting harder and harder to keep the cable release firmly attached- the hole was getting stripped. So I went to Bolt Canyon at McGuckin Hardware (only the BEST HARDWARE STORE IN THE UNIVERSE, known to Boulder-area folks as just "McGuckin's") with the cable release and voila- one of the guys found a nut that fit the threads perfectly in about 53 seconds- yeah, under a minute. Turns out he had done the match at least once before- goes to show how comprehensively the guys at McGuckin's know their stuff. Pretty nice compared to drifting around a Home Depot feeling small, insecure, and uncared for... Anyway, it was a 4mm nut with standard metric threads, I believe.

Next, I drilled out the hole a little more for clearance and, lacking a TIG welder, used some PC-Metal Hand Moldable Multi-Purpose Epoxy Putty Stick (also obtained at McGuckin's) to attach the nut over the hole. I ran a 4mm bolt up through the hole and threaded it into the nut so I could pull down on the nut into a small donut I made of the epoxy putty without squeezing any of the epoxy into the threads. Then, once things were looking OK I unscrewed the bolt so it wouldn't get epoxied in by any stray putty (a brilliant ploy if I do say so myself.) I also built up a bit more epoxy putty around the nut so it would firm everything up. Once set (an hour at room temp.), all I had to do was put a little more bend in the aluminum bar so the cable release actuator could adequately reach the camera's shutter, since the nut created a little more stand-off than I originally had.

Below see the nut-job (no, not me, the cable release bracket!)

And here are some rarities I documented yesterday at Pueblo Reservoir using my new & improved digi-schmoking rig. Notice a theme here? (Hint: negro, preto, 검정, 黒, nero, schwarzes, noir, 黑色, الأسود, etc.) Oh, and the Black Brant was snapped through a chain-link fence- still came out OK. (Technique tip: If you have to photograph through a fence put your scope or lens right up to the fence if possible.)

Digi-schmokin'

Update: I'm now using the Leica C-Lux 2 camera. Other than re-positioning my cable release, everything else works the same with my digiscoping rig as described below...

Note equipment update here...

I'm feeling like I have my new digiscoping rig dialed in now. While I prefer to use my DSLR rig (Nikon D2x + 200-400mm f/4 VR, etc.) for bird photography whenever possible, there are many situations where digiscoping still rules. For example, last weekend my dad Jim & I re-found a young Brown Pelican that has been hanging around Colorado's northern Front Range all summer. The Colorado Bird Records Committee wants documentation of this rarity, a process always made easier with a photo. Unfortunately, we were seeing the bird from over 1/2 a mile away, well beyond the practical range of the DSLR. While it won't make the next cover of National Geographic, I could obtain an identifiable photo even at that extreme range with my digiscoping rig.

A couple of months ago, the supportive folks at Leica Sport Optics sent me their C-Lux 1 camera and Digital Adapter 2 to hook up with my APO-Televid scopes. The camera is pretty amazing- super fast start-up & focus speed, virtually no shutter lag, no vignetting beyond the widest zoom stop (and only minor corner vignetting then...), etc. Plus the LCD screen is really wide & bright, the camera is small, the pics are sharp, battery management is really good, and so on (can you tell that I like this camera?) The adapter is a little bulky but light, very easy to set up, and goes on and off the eyepiece quickly with a one-screw lock. Basically, once you have a bird in view it is only a matter of a few seconds to have the camera mounted and shooting. Here's an example of a preening Long-billed Curlew taken with this rig (and not at 1/2 mile away- more like 70 yards.):

Still, there were times when I missed the ability to fire the camera remotely. On a previous set-up, I had used a cable release bracket made by EagleEyeUK to fire my Nikon Coolpix 4500. After using the C-Lux 1 / Digital Adapter 2 rig for a while, I realized that by adding a simple aluminum extension on the top of the adapter, I could use a cable release to accomplish hands-off digiscoping (and thus minimize shake, the ultimate enemy of high-magnification photography.) To accomplish this on my new rig, I just used some thin aluminum bar stock, riveted it on the top of the adapter, and drilled a hole above the shutter to accept the cable release. I put a spot of self-adhesive felt on the shutter button so the cable release actuator wouldn't slip around, and used a small wood screw to taper the hole and have some starter threads for the cable release tip to bite into. Lastly, I slightly bent the aluminum bar down towards the shutter to compensate for the tendency of the cable release to push the thing up.

So now I'm feeling like I can worry about the bird, and not my equipment, when I'm digiscoping- a state of photographic nirvana. Jeff Bouton coined the term, "digi-schmokin'" when we were blasting pics left and right on our World Series of Birding digiscoping big day. I like the term, capturing the gestalt of digiscoping with confidence and success. With my new rig now dialed in, I'm confident I can get in the digi-schmokin' zone whenever I've got birds in my sights.