Not a very good birding day

Or so it seemed until I reviewed my photos.

Yesterday, my wife and I thought we'd go out to William O'Brien park to look at wildflowers and see if I could shoot some birds. As we started driving, we said, "maybe we should call Tomy and see if he'd like to join us". We did and he decided he'd rather go shoot birds and walk with us than pull buckthorn which was his plan for the day. We stopped by his place to pick him up, and he commented that he'd seen some Indigo Bunting so we decided to try shooting at his place first.

He has a big dead tree near his drive that a woodpecker has made a home in and we saw it fly in and out, so, I tried to capture it. Didn't quite get the shot ...

While waiting for the Indigo to show up, I did snap a shot of this Tennessee Warbler

Then the Indigo showed up. It didn't come very close but I got a few of it in flight and perched a ways off ...

Also got a shot of this Downy

We left Tomy's and he suggested we go to a place he called his "secret stash" where he said we could get lots of warblers. We hiked through mosquito and tick infested long grass, woods, and down a steep hill to a wetland where we saw NO birds!
Then we headed for William O'Brien park, but my wife wanted to stop at a garden center along the way to pick up a plant. While there, she spotted this Killdeer nesting under one of the plant display tables and called us over to photograph it!

We then proceeded to the park and hiked the loop trail along the St Croix river, where I got a shot of this Baltimore Oriel.
Usually this route is brimming with wildflowers, but there weren't many this year, a real bummer for my wife, and I'd carried the EM1/ w12-100 in addition to my OM1 w/100-400 just to be able to take wildflower pictures.

There we also saw some swallow zipping around over the river, and a Rose Breasted Grosbeak which I didn't get shots of. We see Goldfinch at home all the time, but this guy was looking so good in the sun against the blue sky, I couldn't help but shoot him.

Bummed over our "poor" bird outing, we took Tomy home, and driving into his place, spotted an Eastern Bluebird flitting about. I did manage a few shots of it.



In retrospect, not such a bummer of a day afterall.

NIce set of birds.. a good day .. I have to say that usually when I find a killdeer nest her mate will try to lure me away ....

WhyNot

A very nice assortment of birds Jim. Apparently you need a 1000 mm lens to get those one far away. I would not want to have to carry it though! It has been a very long time since I last saw a bluebird Jim. I need to put up the bluebird house my grandson and I built likely five years ago now. I may have to buy a fence post to do so which is why it has not happened, along with him getting older and losing interest!

Andrew

Thanks Andrew.
Maybe I should try the OM1 Digital Zoom and in camera processing. Andy Rouse seems to think it's better than an optical 2x converter in this video.

The spot she picked in a busy garden center was probably too much for her mate.

I would say u had a very good day Jim with some lovely shots there u seem to be doing well the BIF shots something I haven’t quite mastered yet 🙂 Paul

Thanks Paul.

Just a quick test this morning showed me Andy is all wet about the quality of OM1 digital zoom.
First a digital zoom shot.

Next, the ORF of that image cropped to the same area and processed in DxO with DeepPrime denoising.

No other processing done to either image - the DxO crop clearly wins.
A superior image with 1/4 the resolution and 1/8 the file size!

Perhaps the first missed focus Jim? If you have OM Workspace installed you could check to see if it shows the focus point for the first. Perhaps it just doesn't work well as you say. I have never used it on purpose but I think I did once accidentally.

No perch on the bird house. Metal plate to stop larger birds from making the entrance larger. Do you get residents? We have three for small birds hanging. They have all had wrens at one point of time. I have not sat out in the gardens this year so I do not know if they are still in use. The wrens are still here though as I have seen them.

A good looking day here, hope yours is as well.

Andrew

I think you had a good day, Jim. I wouldn't be bummed with these.
Also, thanks for the test of the digital zoom. Now I know not to bother with it. Rich

They are the same photo. I set the camera to digital zoom and took a shot with LSF+RAW. The LSF is the first image above, the RAW was taken into DxO, cropped to about the same area and exported to jpg using DeepPrime XD. Note they are the same file name other than the DxO extension.

Yes, the Wrens are using it.

Yes, it's not a beautiful day - it's a spectacular day - except for all that smoke from Canadian wildfires 😉