Mother's Day

The weather on Mother's Day was beautiful. With plans to visit my Mom later in the day, I went for a walk with the kids to the park in town to give the dear mother of my kids a quiet afternoon at home.  I took the camera along and wandered the grounds around the playground.  I did not linger long by the playground with my long lens for fear someone would call the cops reporting a strange guy with a big camera taking pictures of kids - don't laugh, it's happened before.  Another blogger I follow had it happen to him once when was in a woodlot abutting a school yard!

I watched the always present Robins combing the "grass-scape" for works and grubs, pausing for a few seconds to scan the grass below, and then hopping the next five paces to another place to search.

American Robin

I watched this Common Grackle take on a different approach to finding food, or should I say, obtaining food.  When the Robins would find a grub or worm, the Grackle would swoop in and pounce.  The undersized Robin would drop the catch and flee, leaving the Grackle to pickup the fallen prize.

Common Grackle thief.

This Grackle did it a few times while I was watching and picked up a good supply of food, likely for a nest full of young somewhere nearby.

Common Grackle with stolen meal.

The familiar high pitched notes of an American Goldfinch caught my attention up in a tree.  It was serenading a female that was calmly sitting by while the male switched from branch to branch, singing its heart out hoping to convince the lady of its worth.

Male American Goldfinch with female in background.

Although I'm doubting it now, I'm pretty sure the bird in the background is the female. Usually Goldfinches are quite camera shy but it seems this pair was quite distracted and I could get quite close. Too bad they were way up in the tree.

male American Goldfinch singing away.

female American Goldfinch

male American Goldfinch

After returning from the park, I wandered behind our place in the church yard to see if any migrants might have stopped for a rest in our little area of town.  Way up in the tops of some old spruce trees was some movement and I took some pictures with harsh mid-day lighting.  The birds were constantly moving through the branches and it was a challenge to try and get a few good pictures.  Previewing the pictures I assumed they were Yellow-Rumped Warblers and didn't think much about it till editing them recently.  I'm still not 100 percent sure, but I think they were They were Cape May Warblers (Thanks Dwayne!).  I'm pretty sure the bird pictured below is a young male.  Life bird #203.

Cape May Warbler

These little birds prefer the spruce budworm, but also have a unique feature in the warbler world.  They have a curled, semi-tubular tongue which they use to gather nectar during the colder seasons after having migrated to the West Indies islands.

Cape May Warbler

What had actually brought me to these tall spruces was a Gray Catbird which was eluding me earlier.  I was able to get one quick shot as it played cat and mouse (yes, pun intended!) between the large row of stout spruce trunk bases.  Although not a great shot, I thought I'd include it as it shows, albeit obscured somewhat, the bright rusty colour under its tail.

Gray Catbird

We headed to my parents church in Cambridge for their second service, and afterwards, my youngest brother pointed out a neatly carved hole in an aging Maple tree in the front yard of the church.  Soon enough, the curious head of a Red-bellied Woodpecker appeared, giving away location of an active nest site.

Red-bellied Woodpecker in nest cavity.

Once it got used to us standing there, it seemed content to just watch us right back.

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Red-bellied Woodpecker

However, once the curiosity of the young boys running on the other side of the church lawn brought them over, the woodpecker had enough and fled with its trademark, scolding call.  We didn't stay long after that and let it return to the nest.

Just as we were about to leave, a Cooper's Hawk soared over, nice and slowly so I could get a reasonably clear picture as it coasted west, way above us.

Cooper's Hawk

That afternoon we headed to the Huron Natural Area near my parent's place for a walk before supper.  It's a beautiful spot in an area quickly being developed with new housing.  Great to see such a large area being left for conservation.  Since the camera was in use for capturing our family time, I didn't do a lot of bird searching or photography.  I was surprised though that there weren't more birds to be seen then we did.

Spring fiddlehead in the afternoon sun.

We headed back to the home of half my childhood (after we moved) and enjoyed time with family and spent time appreciating my great Mom!!

Mourning Dove

I'd almost completely forgotten....  My outing earlier that day had been to take my first run with our new camera.  I had convinced Henry's to drop an already sale price on a Sony a65 to replace our dead a33. After quite a bit of research (online and talking to various Sony and Henry's staff), I'd determined fixing our stuck shutter was likely to be between $400 and $500.  I ended up getting the new camera for barely more than that.  On top of that, the a33's shutter had already died on us once with the camera being replaced for us under warranty.  With it having hinted at a failure earlier and then finally dying, I was nervous about spending that much money on a shutter system with known problems.

For those of you proud Nikon or Canon owners who I'm sure are right now wondering why I still went with a Sony... already owning Sony lenses meant I was not going to start over again with a whole new camera system.  There are things I really like about the Sony cameras, and then other days when I really wish I could get another stop or two of light without the "transparent mirror" in the way.

Image grabbed from Sony's website of the a65

So far from my few outings with the new a65, here are my pros and cons:

Pros
Bigger: Yes, I found the a33 too small.  I don't have huge hands, but when you're gripping a camera for a few hours on an outing, it actually is a pain having a small camera in your hands.
Faster: It can shoot 10 fps with continuous AF but AE locked after the first shot, and 7 with adjusting AE. That's nice and fast!  And when capturing while panning, the lag problem with the display of the last picture is greatly reduced.
24.3MP: Though really it's getting pretty high, if you really get the focus right, you can crop in nice and close on a distant subject.
Additional Focus Mode:  Sony has added one new focus mode which groups all the sensors in a field of three.  That limits it from hunting as much when there is varied  focus items.
Overheating: Or rather, the lack there of!!! In warm weather, the a33 would constantly overheat on me and shut off.  That was extremely annoying!!  I will not miss that.  Almost reason enough to switch just for this!
new OLED viewfinder: Sony has upgraded the digital viewfinder.  In normal lighting, you can hardly tell anymore that it's not optical.  It has almost double the pixels of the a33, and with the OLED compared to LED, it uses less power and presents much cleaner when displaying motion.

Cons
Programmable button: I changed the D-Range button on the a33 to focus mode so I could switch quickly between single point focus and wide (say a noticed a bird in flight and needed to switch quickly).  However, though the a65 does the same, the only button I don't want remove its normal mode from, can't utilize the customized mode in Manual mode.  Why, I do not know!  I usually shoot in fully manual.

Multi Shot Self Timer: This is a general gripe.  I don't know if any of the other SLR brands have this, but I can't for the life of me understand why they don't have a feature to shoot a sequence of multiple pictures on self timer.  Our old Panasonic FZ30 (now that was a great camera in its day!!) had this.

Ok, have any of you other photographers had this idea?
"Camera, ISO 400"
"Camera, Focus, Point"
"Camera, Focus, Burst"
Being able to have the camera obey voice commands to adjust functions without having to shift to another hand hold for another button and change a mode would be great!  Maybe that feature would price the camera completely out of my market I don't know, but you'd think with all the voice control on our phones, that technology has been mastered?


But to wrap it up, a post mother's day thanks to my Mom who is very dear to me.  She's a great mom and now is a great grandmother to our kids!  She throws her heart and soul into everything she does, sometimes so much that it takes a little too much out of her I fear. ;)  I love you Mom and thank God for you and your huge impact on who I am!

Until next time...
Keep enjoying HIS handiwork!

Happy Birthday to Me

Not really...it's not even close to my birthday actually, but I used birthday money this past Friday to upgrade my lens arsenal to something a little .... no, a lot more exciting!  Between a few year's worth of birthday money, some saved pennies, and lots of patience and Kijiji searching, I finally found a suitable deal on a lens I'd been hoping to get for a while.  It's SIGMA 150-500mm F5-6.3 APO DG OS HSM Lens.

I'm quite excited and have been able to use it twice, and so far, I'm very happy with it.  The pros of the lens features include:

• A big reduction in Chromatic Aberration meaning no more purple edges on brightly lit/contrasting edges
• Sharper, quicker, and very quiet focusing from the HSM focusing system
• Optical Stabilization that works extremely well.  The primary OS1 mode is bi-directional, and once locked on, does an excellent job.  OS2 Mode is only vertical so that if you are horizontally panning with a moving object, you're not fighting that motion.
• The manual focus ring is actually quite nice. It is gradual enough so that you can focus finely enough.  My Sony lens was so touchy, that it was impossible to do really.
• Oh, and one minor point, the zoom is much larger! 66% more! :)

Here is a picture of the new lens side by side with the Sony kit lens which came with the camera.

It's a bit larger, so that makes it a bit more of a big deal to bring along, and in high winds (like most of us in Southern Ontario had this weekend) with the sun hood on, it's like trying to hold a sail still!  But I'm not anticipating most of my outings will be in wind like that!

I have two outings worth of pictures to catch up on now, but I'll give you a preview with one shot for now.  With all the rain in the forecast, I won't be out for a while anyway!

Canada Goose pair (manual focused through the grass)

Oh... and speaking of birthdays, tomorrow my dear wife Holly turns a young 35 years old..... She's my best friend, and I'm blessed richly to be married to such a beautiful girl.  She's the amazing mother and teacher of our 5 wonderful (most of the time!) children, and is way better to me than I will ever deserve. It's been over 10 years of marriage now, and I know more and more the truth of the phrase "my better half".  She's far more patient and giving and loving to me than I deserve!  I'm thankful for her good example in her daily walk as a Christian and she's such an encouragement to me in many ways.  I'd be lost without you dear - Love you so much and I hope you have a great birthday! 

And in case anyone was thinking it, no, I did not buy her the above lens for her birthday! :)

Uh Oh! That Didn't Sound Right!

I'll wait till the end to share the bad news...

UPDATE: A colleague at work here (thanks John!) corrected me on my turtle identification.  The two turtles I thought were Painters are actually Red-eared Sliders.  They are not native to Southern Ontario but likely pet releases.  They don't make it through the winters here, so will likely not be around next spring. Unless we get an even crazier winter than the past one!  So replace Painter with Slider when you read the post. :)

I went out today for a short lunch break to Bayfront Park and was enjoying a rather bold Painted Turtle. They are usually quite quick to relinquish the warm sun for the cover of the cool water when anyone approaches. Its fellow sunbathers were more typical, splashing into the water as I approached closer than my initial picture or two.

Painted Turtles sunning,
maybe a Northern Map Turtle?

I didn't realize this until looking at the pictures tonight... In the picture above, the middle turtle has a somewhat "serrated" edge along the back.  The focus is on the front turtle, so hard to really see the pattern on the shell.  Also, the shell doesn't have the "brim" effect the other two Painters do. Might be a Northern Map Turtle?  They are threatened species in Ontario.  Any professional opinions?

The brave one, or the foolish one?

Coming in for a look.

Man, this shell is heavy!

The segue into the next topic is the turtle in the bottom of the picture below.  With the distance, the harsh noon day light, and my lack of knowledge of turtles, I could not tell what kind it was.  It didn't look like a painted turtle to me.  A smaller snapper?  Seemed a strange place to be, and I wonder if it was hanging out there, hoping for an opportune moment for a meal?  Again, anyone know if this is possible?

So, the Mute Swan pair is back by the gazebo in the boat launch bay at the park.  They've made a larger, taller nest just a little north of their last year's site.  Though I wonder, maybe the other nest started out the same size - I only started visiting not long before the goslings hatched.  I wonder if the nest slowly settles as the lower reeds get water logged and lose their buoyancy.  

Mute Swan incubating eggs with a
turtle on the nest edge.

I was told by others there that there are 12 eggs this year which would be a very large clutch.  Last year there were 9 which was also larger than the average 6. I'll see if I can get an actual count soon.


Now the bad news...
You know that great sound and feel of camera shutter action? There is something about that feel and sound that is satisfying.  Well, during a series of quick shots while the turtle was climbing out of the water, (not that they move that quickly) the reassuring click was not the same - it was short and incomplete.  Next, the camera shut off with no warning.  My first thought was that it did not sound right, and second hope was, did the battery die so suddenly that the camera couldn't put out it's usual warning?  I was hoping, but my gut told me no.

'Twas not to be.  Back at the office confirmed the shutter was stuck shut.  I dropped it off at the camera shop tonight to be shipped to Sony for repair, still under warranty thankfully.  It will be 4-6 weeks, or longer if parts aren't available.  Hmm.... Bald Eagles just hatched, Sandhill Cranes nesting, who knows what else during the exciting spring months?

Of course, life does not end, and I should probably put this freed up time towards spring yard cleanup, lots of Church work on the to do list, etc, etc.  Priorities right?  Although I enjoy this hobby, it's telling to see how one reacts when the things we find joy in are removed (although I realize this is just temporary).  Brings back to mind my post about hobbies where I was challenging myself previously.  I'll have to think on whether I followed through on some of my plans there!

I do have more Sandhill Crane pictures to post, so those will come sometime soon.  Till then, I'll have to be content to enjoy seeing things without a camera in between the creature and me.  Maybe that's not a bad thing.  But I'll be anxious for the camera back.

"New" Lens

I'm taking a few minutes for a break from cleaning bathrooms, getting at least one of the kids to keep the vacuum cleaner moving through out the house, and feeding the washing machine with never ending supply of laundry. :)

the "new" Tamron lens

I mentioned back in December that I had purchased a new lens... it's new to me, but actually it's likely about 13 years old.  I bought a Tamron AF 28-300 F3.5-6.3 LD Aspherical IF 185D off Kijiji after looking here and here for the only real reviews I could find.  For now (and may never be) it is not in the budget to purchase some of the fine glass that is out there to take really crisply focused shots.  I paid $100 for the lens and a Minolta 3600 HS D flash which I thought was a good deal.

The benefit of the new lens is that it has some low dispersion (LD) glass in it.  My previous Sony kit lens is all plastic elements.  So the new Tamron lens doesn't get the chromatic aberations (CA) or purple fringing nearly the same as the Sony lens.

Here is a shot of a kingfisher at Bayfront Park this January, which on the Sony lens would have turned out with all the branches being purple.  The bottom right side still has a slight bit of the CA happening, but not as bad as the Sony lens would have.

Belted Kingfisher

Another plus of the Tamron is it's bottom end of the focal range: 28mm  vs 70mm of the Sony; a welcome extension to the almost wide angle range.  It actually is 42mm (1.5 x 28mm for the APS-C sensor size) so not wide angle, but still provides a bigger range on the bottom end all in once lens.  It also "collapses" into a smaller length than the Sony which is nice for carrying around.

...Well, it's now the next day... :)

However, a trade off seems to be that the Tamron doesn't seem to be quite as crisply focused at the longer focal lengths out to 300mm.  That is somewhat frustrating and I feel like I have to choose between the CA issue and focus quality.  Especially with birding, it's often that you're shooting against sky and back lighting, so the CA often creeps up.  But it is never enjoyable to trade of good focusing!

Another thing I've noticed, is that the Tamron doesn't get you in as close as the Sony does.  Although they both say they are 300mm lenses, the Sony zooms in closer.  Does anyone know if lenses are given their focal lengths like car's engine sizes are - rounded up often somewhat dishonestly?

Oh the trials we have to we go through as relatively wealthy people!  Much of the rest of the world has to make decisions which involve how to feed or put a roof over their families.