Storm

Yesterday we probably had our worse winter storm of the season. We got a little bit of wet snow, but the nasty part was the wind. We don't get hurricanes in Montana, so they say, but the wind picked up our garbage can and dropped it in our neighbor's yard. And it knocked over the trailcam monitoring the nest box. Before it tipped over, it got a couple shots of swallows trying to horn in on the work the bluebirds have done. The bluebirds seem to disappear when the weather is bad, so we'll see if they return in a day or two. They were last seen in the early morning on the 5th. The hope still is the bluebirds get this box and the swallows take the new box 30 feet away.

Also seen, the first appearance of the neighborhood deer on this camera. I don't know what the one found interesting about the box.

If I was really anal, I would edit these images so the horizon is level and the colors are the same. But there are some variations and I'm not going to worry about it. Also, I'm not using the Gardepro T5CF #14 info strip on these images because I deskew and crop these very wide images, but I did type in my own date stamp. Whether I'll keep doing that, I don't know.

Just one

Just one image from today from the Gardepro T5CF #14. It's cold and blustery with a few snowflakes in the air. It seems like the birds are more active when the weather is better.

Today's action

The bluebirds are in full-scale nest building and the swallows are nowhere to be seen. I haven't seen them at the other nest box, but blog entries from last year indicate they did their takeover last year in the middle of May. Here's a bunch of images from today. Rather than pick a few I'm just posting them all. I lowered the camera a bit to shoot the birds against the sky. Next I'll put the camera on the other side to get the mountains as the background, but the risk of that is it is shooting into the sun for much of the day. Images taken with the Gardepro T5CF #14.

Image dump

I've been getting used to Lightroom and full Photoshop after using Photoshop Elements for many years. Lightroom's strength is it helps organize images more effectively. What I've had to get used to is Lightroom has its own folder structure which does not reflect changes done outside of the program in Explorer. I also upgraded my computer, which was more than seven years old and was stuck on Windows 10. So it is easier to categorize tens of thousands of images with the speedy new setup. Full Photoshop is not that much different from Photoshop Elements so far, but I'm probably not taking advantage of capabilities that I don't know about yet. The thing is I don't want to make fake images on my computer. I want to clean up exposure challenges, but I do not want to make composites or do other manipulation that substantially changes the original. My first college degree was in journalism, not art. In Facebook, some folks were reposting spectacular eclipse images that were obviously composites. Sorry, but the sun was not anywhere near low enough to the horizon to show the eclipse and a field of flash-lit bluebonnets at the same time. But I didn't say anything.

Here are some of the better images from the new Gardepro trail camera #14 not previously posted, from April 24 to 28. I think one of the problems with images this spring from Melted Browning #6 was the camera is not good at closeups, which is what the Gardepro shines at. I can put the Gardepro at one-third of the distance that I had the Browning and get in-focus images. They still aren't nearly as good as images from my 20-year-old 1D Mark II, but they are OK as long as you don't zoom in too closely.

April 24

April 24

April 25

April 25

April 25

April 27

April 28

May Day

Just one from the 1D Mark II today so far. I lowered the camera so there isn't so much background clutter. Now I just have to get him to turn around, but it is clouding up so it might not be today. Just for grins, the second image is from the new trailcam April 23. Keep in mind the distance from the camera to the hole is 18 inches, so this bird is maybe six inches away. If the meta data is to be believed, the exposure time was 1/11,400. It may not be sharp from corner to corner, but there is no motion blur.

1D #9

Gardepro #14

DSLR

The day dawned sunny so I decided to deploy at the old nest box the 1D Mark II with 70-200mm lens set at 70mm, motion triggered. The swallows have been buzzing around, but I'm still hoping they take the new nest box and leave this one for the bluebirds. There are also a couple shots here from the trail camera, including one of a cat early this morning.

Canon 1D Mark II #9

Canon 1D Mark II #9

Canon 1D Mark II #9

Canon 1D Mark II #9

Gardepro T5CF #14

Gardepro T5CF #14

Day 2

It is Day 2 of having two nest boxes. The bluebirds are definitely trying to build a nest in the original box. The swallows have gone to the new box, but also haven't given up the old box. Then they both disappeared when it started raining. We'll see what happens tomorrow. The next sunny day I need to get a DSLR on the case. This new trailcam shows me what is going on but I still think the images aren't quite right, they have a weird texture to them. Images taken with the Gardepro T5CF #14.

Nest building

Swallows still hanging around

Bluebird