Black birds

It has been a wet late spring/early summer here, and there have been very few colorful birds to liven up the back yard. The bluebirds were chased off by the swallows in mid-May, the meadowlarks have kept their distance, the goldfinches come by infrequently, and the hummingbirds usually make a cameo late in the day when the light isn't great. I put out suet for the first time this year, and it draws the big crows and magpies rather than the woodpeckers I was hoping for. But I shoot them, and here are some of the better ones from recent days.

I have been using all of my DSLR cameras and lenses recently. The 6D Mark II (#12) I usually shoot manually. The 5D Mark III (#8) gets the remote trigger, and was used for these three images. And the 1D Mark II (#9) gets the motion trigger. In the past few weeks, I have used every DSLR lens I have. These were shot with the 15-35mm wide angle zoom lens I've had forever, and it gives a different type of image than the 70-200 zoom for example.

Magpie

Crow

LBB (little brown bird)

Hummingbirds

I've gotten a few hummingbird images since the previous post. The first image was taken yesterday with the 300mm lens on the 5D Mark III, remote trigger (#8). The second image was taken today with the 500mm lens on the 5D, remote trigger. The final image also was today on the 500mm, but is not remote triggered. I think to get more flight shots, I'm going to have to forego the remote trigger and try to follow with the lens.

You can tell the different in the bokeh between the 300mm and 500mm. The 300mm is showing the faint bands of an out-of-focus fence. The 500mm is completely smooth.

Magpie and hummingbird

In regard to yesterday's post about getting a magpie and a hummingbird, the first attempt at getting that magpie was semi-successful using motion trigger. The framing is a just little off so we'll see what else develops today. The second image is what I'm calling a grackle, and this is the type of shot I'm trying to get. The third image is a crow, and in the fourth image I aimed the 5D to get a shot of that same crow getting harassed by a swallow, whose nest is just off to the left. A few hours later, I got the first hummingbird image of the season with the 6D controlled by the phone app. The little perches are good for the birds, I suppose, but takes a bit out of the imagery. Yes, I did use all three of my DSLRs today. 1D, 5D and 6D. See below for technical details.

Camera for first three images: 1D Mark II (#9) with 70-200mm zoom, ISO 400. Camtraptions motion trigger on a separate tripod with wireless receiver on the camera. Magpie: f/9, 1/800, 113mm. Grackle: f/9, 1/1000, 113mm. Crow: f/8, 1/640, 87mm. Crow & Swallow: Camera 5D Mark III, handheld, 300mm lens, f/8, 1/400, ISO 200. Hummingbird: Camera 6D Mark II, remote trigger (phone app), 300mm lens, f/5, 1/400, ISO 200.

Feeder

My goals for the back yard the next month or so are to get a magpie on a rock and a hummingbird at the feeder. I have magpie shots with the trailcam (below) but I want a DSLR shot. The weather and other conditions have not lined up in recent days so I just set up the remote trigger on the bird feeder today. I've been using the old 1D Mark II again for a few years now, but dug out the Tamron 28-300 zoom lens for the first time in a long time. The Tamron dates to around 2000 when I was still using film and wanted a long lens. Eventually I started buying expensive Canon lenses and the Tamron mostly disappeared into the bag. It's an OK lens, but I have better. Later I switched back to the Canon 50mm for the next two images. It has a broken autofocus but that doesn't matter because I always manually prefocus this type of shot.

Tamron 24-300mm at 70mm

Canon 50mm

Canon 50mm

Magpie on trailcam

Deer

Usually when I check trailcams, I take a DSLR with a long lens. But today I wanted to shoot flowers and running water, so my lenses were the 100mm macro and 24-105mm zoom. And it turns out I needed a long lens for a deer that was on the trail. At least it was just a deer instead of a moose or an elk (or a bear). I believe the DLSR shot and the trailcam image (Reconyx #2) are the same deer a few minutes apart. I also wanted to check on Browning #6, which I have set up close to a log on which I have seen a bobcat in the past. The third image would have been a complete success if it had been the bobcat instead of a squirrel. The fourth image is a deer from the other Reconyx, #7,

DSLR 105mm

Trailcam #2

Not a bobcat

Trailcam #7

Remote triggers

The goldfinches seem much later this year than last, which I'm attributing to the bigger blackbirds, magpies, crows and even ravens lurking around and chomping on the suet feeders I put out hoping to attract woodpeckers. No woodpeckers. I set up the 500mm lens on the 5D with the remote trigger to get a few of the little birds that are starting to show up in numbers.

Once again, a quality lens on DSLR is unmatched. But I can't be sitting there all the time. I can't use the motion trigger with this because the feeders sway back and forth and I would snap 5,000 images to get two usable ones.