Dancing with Sandhill Cranes

This week, I spent a couple of days down at Long Point on Lake Erie. My main goal was to photograph the Sandhill Cranes that are spending the winter there, but I was also on the lookout for anything else interesting, such as raptors and ducks. In the past, I’d only seen Sandhill Cranes in small groups between 3 - 10, except for one occasion when a flock of 250+ flew over me in Saskatchewan last fall, so I was excited to see and hear so many at once. As with any new bird photography experience, there was a lot to learn about the birds’ behaviours and what sorts of photographs I could get of large birds in flocks. What should I be looking for in these birds that would make for interesting photos of their life ways?

Long Point
Long Point is a 40km-long sand spit that sits on the north shore of Lake Erie. It’s a bird migration hotspot in spring and fall, and is especially good for migrating waterfowl staging before continuing on their seasonal migration path. Winter birding can also be quite good at Long Point, and this year is exceptionally good for Sandhill Cranes and Tundra Swans. Late in December, there were reports of 2,000 Sandhill Cranes in the fields just north-west of the point and adjacent to the Big Creek National Wildlife Area. Two thousand! It took until late January for me to make the 80-minute drive, but they were still there … lots and lots of them!

Dancing Encounter #1
On my first visit this week, I spotted a flock of ~100 Sandhills along the side of highway 59, before even making it to Lakeshore Rd, where most of the reports located them. They didn’t flush when I pulled over, so I sat in the car and watched them for a few minutes before slowly getting out, setting up my tripod, and taking some snaps of the groups closest to me.

Sandhill Cranes

Sandhill Cranes

Sandhill Cranes: I feel a dance coming on!

Soon, some of the birds began dancing with each other, as Sandhill Cranes will do! For some reason, it didn’t dawn on me that I’d see this, but I soon woke up to this fact and started snapping what I could. The challenges of getting good photos of the dancing immediately presented themselves to me:

1. Obviously, I needed to get the shutter speed fast enough to try to freeze the action, or at least most of it and especially the faces and eyes. Sometimes motion blur in the wings can add dynamism to a shot of a moving bird, so I was a little less concerned about that.
2. What about depth of field? Whenever I photograph a flock of birds, I like to deepen the DoF to get more than one or two birds in focus. I don’t like the disappointment I feel when I get a potentially great shot, but there are birds in the foreground out of focus exactly where you want the photo’s focal point to be. For this first encounter with dancing Sandhills, the best shots were taken with an aperture of f/8. The birds were far enough away that I was able to maintain enough depth of field. If they were closer, I would have needed more DoF.
3. With so many birds around, how would I maintain focus on the dancers without other birds getting in the way of the action? There wasn’t much I could about this other than to take lots of photos and to keep trying to nail one or two good ones.
4. I gave up on trying to frame the shots, other than to choose which bird to focus on. I could worry about framing later when I could crop the photos during post-production.

This first encounter with dancing Sandhills went fairly well, and while I didn't get as many good photos as I'd like, it still prepared me for the next time.

Sandhill Cranes: Let the Dancing Begin!

Sandhill Cranes: Dance with Me!

As I drove from these dancing Sandhills, I started seeing them everywhere, on both sides of the road, near and far. This was one of those giggly moments when you can’t believe your luck! I turned down Lakeshore Rd and there were many places where there were many birds close to the road. I had my pick of where to park and shoot out the window. I took lots of group and solo shots as they grazed the shaved corn fields, but there was no dancing, so I continued driving around to explore the area.

There were plenty of other birds around, including two large flocks of hundreds of TUNDRA SWANS grazing in the fields, with many flying in formation overhead. There was a large flock of a few hundred RED-WINGED BLACKBIRDS, three ROSS’S GEESE that flew overhead, a couple of NORTHERN HARRIERS, several RED-TAILED HAWKS and four or five BALD EAGLES. One Bald Eagle that swooped in front of my car had me thinking “Golden Eagle!” There had been several reports of a Golden in that exact location, so I was biased into thinking it was so. When I found it perched, it turned into an immature Bald Eagle with an unusually light-coloured back. There was even a KILLDEER along the roadside, which is odd for January.

Dancing Encounter #2
After driving back to Lakeshore Rd, I pulled over to watch a flock of ~50 Sandhills that were very close to the road. Within a few seconds, many of them started to jostle and dance, so I had to quickly get the bean bag onto the car window and my camera onto the beanbag. I started shooting whatever I could, quickly changing settings while I surveyed the scene. Oh no, car coming ... pull in the lens … put it back … where are the birds now … shoot!

The lighting was bad at first and the birds were quite close, so I was quickly adjusting the ISO and aperture depending on the birds’ location, all while trying to keep the shutter speed high enough (1/1600s to 1/2500s) to freeze the action. This all happened within a matter of just seconds, so some of the first shots didn’t end up freezing the action as much I would like, but some were salvageable.

Sandhill Cranes will often pick up stuff a fling it during their dancing.

These two are looking mean!

After about 45 seconds of frenzied excitement, I put my head on straight and got my settings where I wanted them. Now, the main problem was selecting which birds to photograph. The action was fast and furious! The birds were moving in all directions, and finding birds that were dancing and relatively unobscured by other birds was really challenging, especially when trying to work quickly.

The ritual before the dance

Doing its best Dracula impersonation

Lord of the Dance!

Oh yeah! I can stand taller than you!

Ultimately, I got some nice photos of the dancing and the cool pre-dance displays. When I reviewed photos at home, I was often thinking, “Damn, if only this one was in focus!!" Still, as much as I wish I was positioned better (i.e. further away) and more prepared when the action started, I’m really happy with the results. So much so that I went back for more two days later!

The only way to be prepared for unanticipated behaviours and quick action is to go find the birds and practice, practice, practice. The next time I photograph large flocks of Sandhill Cranes, I will already know what to expect, and have some sense of what I need to do to get the shots I want, shots that show something interesting about the appearance and behaviours of Sandhill Cranes.

Snowies, Roughies, and the Perils and Pleasures of Handheld Photography with a 600mm Lens

Yesterday, I drove up to the beautiful Mennonite farm country north of Waterloo. They know how to build and maintain side roads in that part of Ontario! They're well plowed with very wide shoulders. This is, of course, for the Mennonites' horse-and-buggies, but it's also excellent for birding -- for quickly pulling over to check out that mystery bird perched in that big old tree. Many of those roads have almost no traffic on them, which is a great safety feature for birders, because, as you probably know, birders have a tendency to drift all over the road while they rubber-neck looking birds! I need a bumper sticker that says, "I swerve for birds!"

My target birds for this trip were Snowy Owls and Rough-legged Hawks, and possibly Snow Buntings. One of the sights I hadn't anticipated was the number of outdoor skating rinks at every school with lots of kids having fun. It warmed my heart!

Onto the Birds
It's not been an excellent winter for Snowy Owls in southern Ontario. Some winters are great, some less so. This is one of those "less so" years. So, when planning the day, I went onto eBird to find where people have been reporting Snowies. North of Waterloo was the closest area with a lot recent sightings. I also new that I was likely to see Rough-legged Hawks up that way. We don't get many Roughies around Hamilton, so I was hoping to get some good looks and photographs of some while also looking for Snowies.  I was not disappointed ... well, not totally.

Adult Male Snowy Owl

It didn't take long to find the first Roughie of the day, and it was perched right beside one of those wide dirt roads. After nearly driving into the ditch masquerading as a shoulder covered in snow (so much for my theory of wide roads being safer for birding), I hopped out of the car with the monster lens and attempted some handheld photos. A 600mm lens with a 1.4x attached is a difficult thing to hold steady. Most photos of this bird are soft, although a few of the flight shots worked out.

Rough-legged Hawk, light morph

I continued driving to Snowy-Owl-central, but didn't get far at all when I spied a second Roughie in a tree beside the road. Like the first Roughie, it was too high in the tree to shoot from the car using my window-based bean bag support, so I jumped out and attempted more handheld shots, using the top of the car door as a make-shift tripod. I remembered to turn off the car; otherwise, the vibrations would have created soft photos. These shots were better, but still not the super tack-sharp photos I'm accustomed to.

Not long after, I spotted my first of three Snowies for the day. Using my tripod, I got lots of nice sharp shots of a brilliant white adult male, although it was a little too far away for much feather detail.

Adult Male Snowy Owl

The Results
I was excited when I arrived home to view the photos, but that excitement quickly faded to disappointment when I looked at the hand-held Roughie photos. Almost all of them were soft, and several immediately went into the garbage bin. There were a few that were salvageable, but software can only do so many things, and correcting soft focus isn't one of them. I'm happy to have come back with a few good photos, but disappointed when I think of the lost opportunity for several shots of different birds in a variety of poses.

What are the lessons here? Well there are at least two:

1. I need much more practice at shooting handheld with a 600mm + 1.4x lens!
2. Maybe I should get a monopod that I keep attached to the camera in the front seat for those quick-shot moments, when there's just not time to set up a tripod.  I have the window-based bean bag, which works very well from inside the car, but isn't particularly good when the subject is up high in a tree. If I go the monopod route, I'd also need a new tripod head that would support the Arca-Swiss lens plate that's attached to the lens. My bank account is not going to like this!!!

I'm hoping to take another trip to view the Snowies and Roughies next week, and hopefully I'll get some closer, more detailed shots of the Snowies and some less rough shots of the Roughies. Rough rough!

Rough-legged Hawk, light morph

Wild Gray Partridge: Not!

Sometimes, a day of birding starts with great hope. Sometimes, that hope converts into success, like that May morning when Bruce was confident it was going to be a mega-day at the tip of Point Pelee, and it turned into the most amazing mega-day ever!

Other times, hope turns to disappointment. Today started with the excitement of seeing wild Gray Partridges just outside of Paris. It's been a long time since wild Gray Partridge were seen in the Hamilton Study Area (HSA). As I was finishing my coffee before packing up my gear for the drive, a message went ding-a-ling on my phone. It was a post to the Ontario Birds messaging app from Jean Iron, who had just watched someone release two Gray Partridge in the exact location where they’d been seen yesterday. She spoke with the fellow, who said he uses them to train his dogs. I can only imagine the collective sigh of disappointment let out by many birders in southern Ontario at that news. So much for the resurrection of wild Gray Partridge in the HSA!

Plan B: Go to the usual winter spot in Dundas for Snow Buntings. Someone reported a flock of 50 at this location over the weekend, so I figured the chances were decently good that I'd see them. Enter disappointment number 2. Not a single Snow Bunting to be seen. But there were some Horned Larks, so I took some snaps of them from the car, and even though the were quite far away, it was still nice to watch them run around and occasionally call in the cold wind.

Tomorrow? Drive around looking for Snow Buntings, Snowy Owls, and whatever else there is to see. No expectations.

Here's a snap of one of the Horned Larks today:

Horned Lark, Dundas, ON

Good Experience with Canon

People often focus on their bad experiences with businesses, so it becomes easy to forget that sometimes there are good people who honestly give a poop about your satisfaction. This is one of those stories.

Just before Christmas, I ordered a 600mm prime lens from Canon through our educational sales rep. He assured me there was stock when I placed the order and that I should receive the lens during the week between Christmas and New Year's.

As it turns out, they did not have stock. The Canon sales rep felt pretty badly about this, so he arranged for a loaner to be sent to me overnight from Vancouver while we waited for more stock, all at their cost. This was an incredibly good gesture! It gave me confidence that they actually care about their customers, at least for high-end equipment.

Having the loaner has given me time to learn how to use the lens to its best capabilities, so when the new one arrives this week, I'll hit the ground running. Not literally of course. Hitting the ground with this lens would be a bad thing, and running with it would be impossible even if I tried!

In the meantime, I'm hoping to get out to see a flock of Snow Buntings reported close by. There'll be Horned Larks as well. Last year, we had Common Redpolls in the same area, but as Ron Pittaway's Winter Finch Forecast for 2019-20 predicts, there won't be any of those this far south this winter. If I have the time and energy, I might also go looking for a Golden Eagle reported up by Glen Morris. These reports are all available on eBird, an amazingly rich citizen-science bird reporting database developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology at Cornell University. Someday, I'll write more about eBird and its impact on birding and bird knowledge.

Today's photo is one of a Bufflehead I recently took with the loaner lens from Canon. It could be a little sharper around the eye, but I really like the duck's position and the camera's point-of-view.

Bufflehead

Updates to Birds of Ontario in Photographs

I made some updates to my Birds of Ontario in Phototgraphs gallery on SmugMug. Folders of Families/Sub-families are now organized according to the OFO taxonomy. I still have 10 galleries of Famlies/Sub-families to organize into species, but 28 are now converted into folders containing galleries for each species.

I also added a search widget, which seems to work remarkably well. Give it a go if you'd like!
UPDATE: Oddly, after running a search, clicking a bread crumb to go back simply reloads the search results. Hitting the back button in your browser works though.

At present, there are photos of 160 species organized into Family/Sub-family folders of species galleries and 33 species still to go. That makes 193 species, give or a take a few that have folders but await my uploading a photo. I've likely missed adding a few species for which I have photos, but just haven't found them yet. My Ontario life list currently sits around 260, so I have photos of ~75% of the species I've seen in Ontario.

Here's a photo of one of my favourite Ontario rarities, an adult Long-tailed Jaeger, seen in Hamilton on August 7 & 8, 2018.

My Online Bird Photography Portfolio

I've been updating my SmugMug photo galleries a lot over the past 6 months. I have reorganized my Birds of Ontario galleries so that birds are organized into families and species, more-or-less according to conventional taxonomy, although there's a fair bit of wiggle room here since even the experts diverge in some places. It's still incomplete: not all species have been given their own galleries yet (although most most have); I'm missing some very common birds that I take for granted; and I'm missing some less common birds, but ones I should really have photographed by now (can you believe that I don't have a single photo of a Snowy Owl!!!). I've been keeping a log of major updates at the top of the main page. My goal is to have the taxonomic structure finished by early summer 2020, and to continue filling out some of the thinner galleries over time. Here's a link:

https://mactavish.smugmug.com/Birds-2019/Birds/Birds-of-Ontario

Why I Use SmugMug:
Most of my bird photography colleagues use Flickr to share their photographs, so you might wonder why I selected SmugMug.

Six or seven years ago, I went looking for an online service to host my photographs for public and private viewing. This is around the same time that my bird photography shifted from fascinating pastime to very serious pursuit. I compared many services and narrowed it down to two: SmugMug and Flickr. Ultimately, I selected SmugMug for a few reasons, the most important of which was that SmugMug did not make any claims to any rights over my photographs. Flickr, on the other hand, claimed non-exclusive rights to use your photographs for promotional purposes, and possibly other purposes (I don't remember their full terms of service). That was enough to tip the scale. Since setting up my SmugMug account, Flickr was acquired by SmugMug and I don't know if they've updated the terms of service to match SmugMug.

One of the benefits of Flickr is its implementation of some social networking into the service, by which I mean users can form communities and share, like, and follow people. I don't think SmugMug offers this, or if it does, I'm unable to find how to do it. It is clearly not a priority for SmugMug, whereas it's one of the main selling points of Flickr.

My Favourites Gallery:
Another update I made recently to my SmugMug portfolio was to create a new "Favourites" gallery. My plan is to update this gallery regularly. I might change the design so that it's similar to my "2019 Bird Photography Highlights" where I write a short piece about each photograph. But for now, it's up and running as just the photographs with species name. You can find it here:

https://mactavish.smugmug.com/Birds-2019/Favourites/

That's it for today, but let me end with a recent photograph of a Common Goldeneye. Hamilton is a great place for winter ducks, so expect to see more ducks here and in my SmugMug "Favourites" gallery:

Common Goldeneye

Gear Review: Canon EF 600mm F/4L IS III USM Lens - Part 1

Introduction:
This will be a multi-part, multi-day review compiled over time. It will focus primarily on using the lens to photograph birds. My main concern is to talk about using the lens in the field and the quality of the photos it produces with different setups and in different conditions. I use it with the 1.4x III extender, the 2.0x III extender, and on its own. My camera body is a Canon 5D Mark IV.  My experience with the Canon EF 100-400mm II is my main point of comparison.

Why I Bought One:
I bit the bullet and purchased a dream "monster" lens: Canon's new EF 600mm F/4 III. For a couple of years now, I've been shooting with the Canon EF 100-400mm II, which is a fabulous lens for bird photography. It's light and mobile for long birding walks, it provides very fast auto-focus, and it produces very sharp images. I've recommended this lens to many bird photographers looking to upgrade to a longer telephoto zoom, or looking to replace their Sigma or Tamron lens of similar focal length.

Sometimes, though, 400mm isn't enough. So, you add a 1.4x extender and suddenly you're shooting at 540mm. The compromise here, though, is that your aperture goes to F/8, which requires more light (higher ISO to compensate), slows down autofocus, and sometimes produces too much depth of field, creating backgrounds with more detail and less pleasing bokeh for isolating the bird from its background.

Enter the 600mm monster (I've named mine Cyclops). If you're reading this, then you've probably been doing research on the lens, so I won't go through all the technical specifications, except for a momentary word on weight. Yes, it's heavier than the 100-400, and much larger. BUT, it's much lighter than its predecessor. I've only had the lens for four days, but I'm confident that I'll feel comfortable shooting handheld for short periods of time.

Day One:
For my first day, I went to a place nearby where some Eastern Bluebirds are spending the winter. Hamilton winters can often be mild in comparison to other areas in Canada, but we can still get a lot of snow and we always have very cold periods when the lows can hit -20C or lower. So, to have a group of 17 Eastern Bluebirds close by is a real treat at a time of year when many of the colourful birds have migrated south. As an added bonus, a Northern Shrike is living in the same field. If you've ever photographed Northern Shrikes, you know that they can be quite skittish and tend to stay far away from you.

First Shots: Handheld, No Extender
My first shots with the 600mm III were handheld, no extender attached. When I arrived at the Bluebird field, I was delighted to see an Eastern Bluebird fairly close to the road. So, I grabbed the camera and fired off a few quick snaps. Unfortunately, I didn't check my settings, which were still set for the 100-400mm. The ISO was far too high, so the photos were quite over-exposed.

Soon thereafter, another Bluebird showed up in a particularly nice setting. I took about 10 handheld shots until the bird was flushed by another birder trying to get a better view. The results were mixed: some shots were tack sharp, others were slightly soft. It didn't take long for my arms to shake a little holding the camera on the bird, waiting for it to turn its head. With the 100-400mm, this is a common practice for me. It won't be with the 600mm III, unless I start doing weights soon!

Here are two samples of those photographs and the camera settings I used. They are unedited except for being cropped for composition and to provide closer detail of the bird. The photos were exported from Lightroom into JPG format, resized to 1400 pixels on the long edge at 100% quality, with no sharpening applied. They exhibit some noise having been shot at ISO 1250.

Canon 600mm III, Handheld, f/6.3, ISO 1250, 1/1250s, -2/3 EV

Canon 600mm III, Handheld, f/6.3, ISO 1250, 1/1250s, -2/3 EV

Note that I was still habitually thinking in terms of using the 100-400mm, so my settings were not what I would use now that I've acclimated a bit more to the lens's capabilities (not sure why I was shooting at f/6.3!). Both photos are noisy because they're shot at ISO 1250 and have had no noise reduction applied. I think the difference in sharpness/focus is mainly due to shooting handheld, even though the shutter speed was relatively high.

The first photo is quite soft. A faster shutter speed might have fixed this. The second photo, with the Bluebird looking further away from the camera, is quite sharp. It doesn't really need much editing for sharpness at all. I was very happy with this example of the lens without an extender attached.

Here's my favourite photo from that set:

Next Shots: Tripod, 1.4x Extender
The next test was with the 1.4x extender attached and the camera on a tripod with a gimbal head. It's been a very long time since I've used a tripod (the 100-400mm doesn't need one), and I'd never used a gimbal head before, so my technique was as novice at it could be!

The bird house in this photo was quite close (20 - 25 feet away).

Canon 600mm III + 1.4x III, Tripod, f/5.6, ISO 800, 1/2000s, -2/3 EV

Other than its underexposure, which was completely my own miscalculation, the unedited image is fairly sharp. As expected, sharpness takes a hit with the 1.4x attached. To prepare this photo to share with others, I would adjust exposure, colour tonality, and sharpness. The difference in sharpness compared to the earlier shots without the 1.4x extender is about the same as I've experienced with the 100-400mm with and without the 1.4x attached. Here's the same photo, edited in Lightroom:

On this day, the keeper rate for photos with the 1.4x attached was much lower than with the 100-400mm + 1.4x, but I attribute this mainly to poor technique using a tripod.

Day Two:
The next day was very windy, and even with the camera and lens attached to a tripod, it was quite challenging to get sharp photos at all, so I won't include any discussion of those.

Day Three:
I discovered after Day One that the firmware on the lens had not been updated to the most recent firmware released in November (version 1.1.2). So, I updated the firmware, which was meant to address some problems with the image stabilization at slow shutter speeds. I went to the Bluebird field again, this time hoping for some good looks at the Northern Shrike.

All photos this day were taken with the 1.4x attached and the camera on the tripod. I wanted to practice my tripod technique and to see if the firmware update made a difference. I'm not sure if the firmware made a difference, but my technique using the tripod was certainly better. The keeper rate rose substantially. Again, my experience the 1.4x attached to the 600mm III was similar to my experience with the 1.4x attached to the 100-400mm II. The photos needed some sharpening, but were still quite good. This is a small compromise for the extra focal length (600mm vs. 840mm).

Here area few shots from that day, cropped for composition, before and after editing:

Canon 600mm III + 1.4x III, Tripod, f/5.6, ISO 500, 1/3200s, -1/3 EV

Edited in Lightroom

Canon 600mm III + 1.4x III, Tripod, f/5.6, ISO 640, 1/800s, 0 EV

Edited in Lightroom

The next tests will be with the 2.0x III attached. My assumption is that the photos will be best for record shots of birds far away rather than for high quality bird photos to share.

2019 in Review

I had a terrific year of birding in 2019. I feel quite privileged and lucky to have had the time and resources to devote to this obsession, which included week-long birding trips to Pt. Pelee in southern Ontario in May, the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland in July, and central/southern Saskatchewan in October. These trips were made especially good because I took them with my brother Bruce, the all-time most bird-obsessed person I know! I have many fantastic memories from these trips and I’m looking froward to creating more in 2020!

I've put together an album of highlights from the year over on my SmugMug account, which you can see here:

https://mactavish.smugmug.com/Birds-2019/2019-in-Review/n-RVp9GQ/

Time for a Blog

Fledgling:
I’m starting 2020 with a new blog on birding. Like many birding blogs, this one will include narratives and photos of my birding adventures in the Hamilton Study Area (Ontario, Canada) and beyond, but it will also include thoughts, reflections, and occasionally ideas on birds and birding in contemporary digital culture.

 

About Me:

I’m a birder, bird photographer, and a university researcher/teacher of digital media & culture. These parts of my life are becoming entangled. In recent years, my birding has intensified to the point of becoming obsessive. I know other birders will understand this obsession. As a photographer, I’ve photographed birds and nature for over two decades. What was once a hobby has become a way of life, and now the subject of my research. As an academic, I research digital culture and pay special attention to the creation and sharing of information by members of online communities and social media streams. And here’s where my interests in birding and bird photography entangle with my research.

As has happened in so many fields of knowledge, birding has been transformed by the prolific creation and circulation of bird-related digital media, whether they be photographs, videos, audio recordings, visualizations of migration data, etc. While multiple forms of media have been part of birding from the beginning, there has never been so many people producing and sharing so much bird media, and at speeds that quickly make old news of today’s record shot of a rarity. No longer do birders refer only to a small and stable set of illustrations, photographs, and audio recordings to aid in bird identification, or simply to admire their beautiful renderings. Now, birding increasingly includes the creation of these media and their circulation on blogs and on social media. I’m interested in the effect that this proliferation of bird photographs has on how we know and understand birds and their life ways.

So, this blog will be a place where I collect records of my birding and bird photography, but also of my thoughts about birding in the digital age.

To add a little photographic flare to this first post, here's a photo of the celebrity Northern Hawk Owl that's been causing quite a stir in Schomberg, Ontario.

Northern Hawk Owl, Schomberg, Ontario