Birds Yesterday Afternoon

I went to a local nature preserve at a really dumb time yesterday afternoon.
I arrived at Tamarack Nature Center at 2 pm, wandered around for 2 hours logging just over 3 miles in the bright hot sun.
It seemed really slow birding until I got to the birdhouses that some Tree Swallow were using.
I spent quite a bit of time and burned lots of frames on the Tree Swallows, and think I got a few good shots.
Along the way I did photograph a few other birds, which when I got home and reviewed them turned out to be 11 different species with one new to my life list.
The new bird was the Dickcissel - a small flycatcher. Here's a few shots of it.



I also got some nice shots of an Eastern Kingbird.

Here's a few of the Tree Swallow.



So despite it being a horrible time for birding - I'm pretty pleased with the results.

1/6400 s and still some motion blur in two of the images Jim. God knows how fast you would have to shot to not get any! I guess the one good thing about going out when the sun is high and bright is that at those high shutter speeds and with the slow lens you still have ISOs that are not insanely high!

Nice that you got a new bird. Are you using an app to identify these birds now or flipping pages either in a book or a digital resource? If it is an app, which one? I like the swallow feeding the nestlings and the stationary bird images. I see birds from time to time at the feeders that I photograph and then have to look up because they are unfamiliar to me. That said, I am not likely to become a birder and go looking for new ones, ever!

Andrew

Thanks Andrew.
Yes. I use Merlin from The Cornell Lab (they also do the eBird app). It lets you ID a bird by photo, song, or characteristics.
It's free and very good. I typically take a photo of display with my photo of the bird up and ID it that way.
Each time you ID a bird, it gives you the option to log your sighting to your Merlin Life List or eBird.
I save them to Merlin but my life list shows up in eBird anyway. If you save to eBird, I think you have the option to save your photo as well.

It supposedly works on Android or iPhone (iPad). I've got a Moto 5G Android phone and while it will do the photo ID, it's crap at doing the sound ID and is extremely slow displaying or searching my life list. The 6 year old iPad I use (and my wife's new iPad) are blisteringly fast running Merlin. Don't know if other Android devices would work better than my Moto, but I'd recommend using an Apple device.

Cornell has bird packs you can download for different countries/areas of world, all free.
It's well worth the investment! 😀

Thanks Jim!

Andrew

The Dickcissel is a nice bird which I haven't seen photos of before.
Thanks for posting.

Don

Thanks for stopping by and taking a look Don.

You got some great pictures, Jim. I like the gaping maw and the last one best. Nice light through the wings in that last one.
Since I live in California, I will be very careful about who I tell that I have finally seen a dickcissel. 🫣 Rich

Thanks Rich. Got a few bird shots yesterday and another this am. Will put them in a new post.

They are good results. Jim very nice set and interesting .. I liked the little insect flying over the head of the swallow in the last shot!!... The one that got away I guess ....

Very nice series, specially last one - great shot!