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