More Waterfowl

It was a beautiful day today and I was able to take my lunch down at Bayfront Park again.  I headed there hoping to see the King Eider which has been sighted there, but my success rate is not good.  I'm afraid my record of finding sighted birds is not too good.  After sharing my poor record with another birder I met on the trail,  he kindly asked if I could let him know the next time I was going to attempt to see a rare bird so he'd know not to bother coming that day. :)

I've seen most of these birds already this winter, but there seemed to be more of the males for some of the birds that I had only seen females before.  The American Coots were new...

American Coots

It was nice and sunny and with most of the ice off of Hamilton Harbour, the waterfowl were all busily searching for food along the water's edge.

Common Goldeneye

I find the cormorants have a comical way of moving through the water.  They often seem to be in a hurry, and hold their head cocked up slightly giving them the appearance of being a bit snobby.

Greater Scaup and Double-crested Cormorant

Hooded Merganser

Canada Goose landing

UPDATE: These are Trumpet Swans, not Tundra Swans....

I also saw some Tundra Trumpet Swans up close for the first time.  I had seen them fly over at a distance earlier this winter.  Although easy to distinguish from the Mute Swan with their black bills, they are very hard to tell apart from Trumpeter swans unless they have a yellow patch in front of their eyes (not always as in this case).  Generally, Tundra Swans are smaller than the Mute Swans we're used to seeing around here.  The Trumpeter Swan is larger than the Mute, and not very common in this area.  >>Once I saw them together with the Mute Swans, I realized they were bigger than I thought. <<

Trumpeter Swan profile

Trumpeter Swans

I also got some directions for where a Great-horned Owl has been sighted a number of times, so I may try that out tomorrow if lunch is free and the sunny weather stays a bit longer.

Of note, I switched back to my old Sony lens today.  I did get some shots with chromatic aberration again, but I do think the shots are much crisper.  We'll see...

"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.

Long-tailed Duck

I have had no time for any birding at all in a long time... my dear wife is suffering through her very rough pregnancy leaving me to pretend to be a mom before and after work. I tell you, you sure notice how much your wife does when she's down and out for weeks on end. I'm not going to pretend I'm even keeping up the standard she does, and I'm getting lots of help from great friends at our church with the kids and meals.  I don't say it often enough - Thanks for all you normally do to keep this house running and raising our kids dear!!

Long-tailed Duck

I had to go to Spencer Smith Park in Burlington to review the park grounds and take pictures for a proposal I'm working on with others from our firm.  While walking around to take shots of the grading, drainage and the promenades there, I saw the usual Canadian Geese and some Mute Swans, but also a number of Long-tailed Ducks.  This is a new bird for me, and not common in Southern Ontario as it's an arctic bird.  It's an attractive bird and also has a very distinct call, which as far as I know, is unusual for waterfowl which don't usually have much more than a single note or sound.  Here is a link to what they sound like.

Correction - The Long-tailed Duck seems to have grown to very large wintering numbers in this area since the zebra mussel's appearance in the Great Lakes.  The range maps I looked at online are either out of date or... well, I'm not sure.  I've looked at some more and now see their range extends below the lakes and into NE USA. Thanks to those who emailed or commented to put me straight. ;)

Male and Female Long-tailed Duck

This seagull is losing it's juvenile stage and decided to put on a show for me while I was taking pictures of the lower promenade.  I had the point and shoot camera from work but got some decent pictures still.

Ring-billed Gull

Till next time... :)

Snowboarding Crow!

I saw this on another bird blogger's site and had to share it.  Hilarious!
Amazing as it is to figure out how to repeat it, I wonder how it discovered this for the first time!
Enjoy.

Left Overs

Well, I don't think it's going to my 8 year old son Andrew's head, but the "guest appearance" post of his pictures had more hits than any of mine. :)  He was quite pleased with the post and Facebook comments and emails he got.  I'm happy for him.  He got that sheepish, shy, trying to hold it back grin some will know of him.

I have a few pictures left over from after my previous CBC count post which I never put on the blog yet.

The first and only bird we saw of the elusive, late staying warblers was the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher.  As you can tell from this picture, this little bird does not stay still.  Here it is just about to drop off to somewhere below.  I had to check once to see that the picture editing software hadn't missed a picture rotation, but it hadn't.

Blue-gray Gnatcather

 This is the closest I've gotten to these cute little ducks.  I finally had some nice lighting and was able to capture some of the iridescence of the feathers on it's head.

Male Bufflehead

Common (to us) but still beautiful Male Mallard.

I really don't know what this female Red-breasted Merganser was going to do with, what I think is a perch.  It was struggling with it for a while.  Between constantly re-arranging it in it's bill, and repeatedly losing its grip only to recapture it after a short chase, we had to give up on seeing the meal go down and moved on.

female Red-breasted Merganser with fish.

On our way home we quickly stopped along York Road as we saw a Bald Eagle in the sky slowly circling over towards us from the north.  It was very high up, and this is more of a "wishing shot" (you know... taking the picture knowing it's really too far away, but taking it anyways) than of any pleasure to you or me after the fact.  This is even a cropped picture.

Bald Eagle

Not much has happened since my post on the Orange-crowned Warbler as I haven't been able to get out.  Work has been very busy so no lunch outings, and the home front is VERY busy as Holly is expecting our 5th and suffers morning, afternoon, evening, and night-sickness for all of her pregnancies.  Things do approach a manageable level towards the due date, but for now she's not capable of much else than overcoming the impulse to deliver (her stomach contents, not the baby) to the sink her latest attempt to keep food down.  We'll just say that both her and I are both eagerly awaiting Aug 10 (or earlier would be fine if that's in the Lord's plans!)

We'll see how long it is till the next post.  Till then, don't hold your breath. :)

Guest Appearance by Andrew

As mentioned in a previous post, Andrew and I stopped off at Bayfront Park after the Christmas Bird Count to see if the highly followed warblers were still there and for him to see some of the many waterfowl still enjoying the warmer, ice free waters of Hamilton Harbour.  The waterfowl didn't dissapoint.

UPDATE: I should add that Andrew is 8 years old. :)

Male Mallard Duck

Female Bufflehead

A juvenile Common Loon?

Mute Swan

female Red-breasted Merganser with catch.
(be sure to click on this shot to view larger)

We were not able to find the Black-throated Gray Warbler (I have popped in there a couple times and have never seen it), but did get to see the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher.  Andrew got a better shot than I have of any time I've been there I think.  You be the judge and let him know.

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

Andrew enjoyed the outing, and so did I.  I think I enjoyed this part of the trip the best with him, as he got quite excited about the pictures he was getting and trying to find different birds and shots.  And he got some pretty nice shots too, if I may say so myself! :)  We'll have to do it again right Andrew?

Crowned

On Jan 2nd most people had the day off, but I decided I'd head in to work and get some quiet time in the office to clean up email and get some uninterrupted work time.  At lunch I headed down to Bayfront Park to see if any of the rare warblers were still hanging around.  This time I put my bike in the back of the car instead of spending 20 minutes walking the almost 2km from the parking lot to where the birds were being seen regularly.  I got their quicker, but that didn't help me to see the Black-throated Gray Warbler.  So far I hadn't had any luck seeing this bird, so I thought to try and get a better picture of the Gnatcatcher I had seen  every time I had visited the trail lately.  But I wasn't to see this little bird either.  I did see Stephen, a gentleman I met during the Hamilton Christmas Bird Count on Boxing Day, and it was nice to meet his wife who had also joined him in search of the Black-throated Warbler.  They had just missed seeing it by 10 minutes or so according to others who had found the bird previously.

Orange-crowned Warbler eating berries.

There were reports of other warblers on the Marina side of the park, so I headed out that way and soon found two excited birders/photographers who were following two Orange-crowned Warblers and a Yellow-rumped Warbler around a clump of trees and golden rod.  I saw the latter bird fly around a bit, but never got close enough to actually really see it.  I did get to see one of the Orange-crowned Warblers and got two brief, poorly lit pictures on a cold and overcast day.  The Orange-crowned Warbler is more native to the western part of the continent, so it's neat to see one in our neck of the woods.  The orange crown on these birds is rarely visible, and mostly visible from the back of the bird as the under feathers on the head are where the orange colouring is hidden.

Orange-crowned Warbler

And I promised I'd post some of the pictures from Bayfront Park  after the bird count - mostly because my son Andrew gets to guest appear with some of his bird pictures he took - he's looking forward to this with great anticipation. ;)