White-breasted Nuthatch

Now it's stopped raining after yesterdays downpour I can take a few bird pictures in the yard.

White-breasted Nuthatch

Sunday Pot Pouri

Sunday morning I was up bright and early for the 1 1/4 hour drive down to Conowingo Dam to photograph the Eagles. I got there about 1/2 hour before the actual sunrise which is when I wanted to arrive. The water was very high and flowing through like the proverbial steam train. I suppose it was too be expected after all the rain and snow we've had, not to mention the 1-2 inches we got last night. OK then. This doesn't look promising, I thought. I took a few shots of the sunrise and a shot of an eagle roosting in a tree. I got chatting to Doug and Geoff a couple of regulars, they said it was dire and has been for a few weeks. It was pretty chilly, colder than a witches tit just waiting for the eagle action that never came. OK then. Plan B. I decided to head to Pinacle Overlook further up the Susquehanna. On the way there I stopped at Muddy Run Reservoir to see if there was anything worth photographing. A White-tailed Doe was quite obliging and didn't mind me one bit. Onward to Pinacle Overlook which was quite misty. So a bit of this and a bit of that. 

Conowingo Sunrise

Conowingo Sunrise with Eagle

Conowingo Eagle (2 of them)

White-tail Doe at Muddy Run

Pinacle Overlook on the Susquehanna

Thanksgiving

Some photos's I took on a walk out to Memorial Lake on Tuesday morning. It was a bit breezy and  overcast and not many birds but I enjoyed it.

Maple

Maple Leaves

Memorial Lake

Memorial Lake

Memorial Lake

Memorial Lake

Sunday Morning, it's freezing

Nice bright Sunday morning and the high winds of yesterday have died down. I had a dead 100ft high Red Oak taken down on Wednesday and I'm really glad it's no longer a threat to the house. I have some videos but for some reason Blogger is acting up and I can't upload them.

Anyway, there was a frost last night, it was down to 29f this morning. My Pineapple Sage survived it and as I'm pretty sure  I saw a Hummingbird yesterday it might come back. This time of year they are usually the rarer varieties. My ground feeder is high with Black Oil Sun flower seeds as there have been several reports of Evening Grosbeak. I dearly want an Evening Grosbeak.

I'm going out later to pot some bare root American Chestnut trees which I got on Tuesday. I'm not going to plant them until the spring as I've ran out of tree tubes to protect them. I also got a Crabapple which will hopefully provide fruit in a few years for the deer.

Here's a picture of a Dunlin from earlier this year at Barnegat Lighthouse.

Dunlin

Fall Colors

Not a classic fall for colors as it's been so wet. Theres a few nice trees but the majority just ditched their leaves before they turned. Heres one from Memorial Lake this morning.

Memorial Lake

Memorial Lake

Rascal always has Fall Colors.

Rascal

Image Manipulation

I've mentioned before that I'm not averse to a bit of image manipulation, quite the opposite, I love it. I'm not a very patient photographer, I'm not one that suffers for my craft, by that I mean I'm not in the field 18 hours a day from dawn to dusk in extremes of temperatures and ridiculous humidities to get the perfect shot. My methodology is get the shot that's presented to you at the time and place thats suits your current situation. This means of course that you don't get the best light or conditions required to make the images that you would like. Most photographers know that the best light ( it's all about light after all) is early morning or late evening, the Golden Hours. Sometimes I can get up and get out early but not often for various reasons. This is where photo editing can help. There are photographic Amish types who shun any form of image manipulation, SOOC is their religion (Straight Out Of Camera). Poor deluded puritan fools, the camera itself is doing its best to display a pleasing image by carrying out all sorts of in-camera edits. The Pagan types like me love the various photo editing programs.

To illustrate my thoughts here's a picture of a Red-Shouldered Hawk taken back in March 2009 at Corkscrew Swamp in Florida. Corkscrew has a superb raised walkway through the Cypress Swamp with huge of trees covered in moss and lichens. As we were walking round there was this Hawk just sitting there watching us.  I took a few hasty shots then realized the lighting was awful so delved into my backpack and fitted my flash. The first image is the result, I've done a bit of tweaking in Capture One my favorite editing package but not too much. The problem with this image is the background, I could have used a smaller f stop than the f/8 I used, this would have blurred the background a bit. The hawk is nice but your eye is drawn to the background not the bird itself. This is where image manipulation can help.

Red-shouldered Hawk

The second image was given the same Capture One edits then exported to an old version of Photoshop. In Photoshop I used the selection tools to cut out the Red-shoulder and the branch it was sitting on, from there I copied the selection to another layer and blurred the background underneath. Probably took me 5 minutes work sitting at my desk drinking a cup of tea. Makes a better picture in my opinion. Of course I could have waited for hours for the Hawk to move to a more suitable perch, but then I wouldn't have seen the Little Blue Heron.

Red-shouldered Hawk

Little Blue Heron