Blackwater - Bald Eagles Spring 2010 pt2

From http://natureandwildlifephotography.blogspot.com/2010/04/blackwater-bald-eagles-spring-2010-pt2.html

I posted this earlier today and now decided to post a bunch more shots from this time a couple weeks ago...

Bald Eagles at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge.

2 Adults.





2 Juveniles.





http://blackwater-national-wildlife-refuge.blogspot.com/

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Original content posted at http://natureandwildlifephotography.blogspot.com/

Nikographer.com / Jon

Great Falls National Park Spring 2010

From http://natureandwildlifephotography.blogspot.com/2010/04/great-falls-national-park-spring-2010.html.

The River's water levels are coming down, and the herons are fishing in the main falls some. Over the last week I saw Great Blue Herons flying around with nesting material, as well as competing for spots to fish from.



There's a rookery up river that is pretty active, and an eagle's nest too. The eagle appear to now have a chick. I didn't follow the exact dates, but the chick might be 2 weeks old now.

I forgot and now remembered some of why I like Great Falls so much. The herons and water are such great attractions, and not having to drive a hundred miles (bombay hook refuge, blackwater refuge) is a nice change of pace.

While there I also saw a couple bluebirds, as well as many vultures (turkey and black). There was also a Red-Tailed Hawk with some crows dogging it on more than one occasion over the main falls.

I highly recommend folks visit Great Falls National Park. Bring a tripod and a short and long lenses.




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Original content posted at http://natureandwildlifephotography.blogspot.com/

Nikographer.com / Jon

Some D300s Bald Eagle Videos

I've had the camera a few weeks now, the Nikon D300s, and I think it is very similar to the D300 for still images, and that's fine. I haven't noticed any big differences, and just remembered one thing I want to do is take another custom white balance reading with an expo disc, and then set my normal fine tune to that. I do shoot RAW, but often still set the WB to custom because it looks closer to accurate color on the back of the camera.

The 2nd memory card slot is neat, I've got a 16GB compact flash card, and an 8GB SD card with the video going to the SD card and still images to the CF card.

Read on for more and for the 2 new videos.







One thing I am not immediately happy about is the format (720p AVI) is not recognized properly by my normal (old) fav video edit app (Video Vegas). These are edited in Windows Live Movie Maker.

I'm going to try to convert in movie maker to WMV and then use Video Vegas. So far that appears to be working, but I've yet to view the output video. I suspect it is going to be lower quality/ smaller video.

I do have Nero from my DVD player and will try that, but in the past I've found VV to be the most intuitive app to use, and it has some nice overlay features for text, images, and the transitions are easy to do. Nero has seemed pretty clunky or required multiple isolated areas of work to put something together.

By comparison, the Canon HD video camera I have produces some strange format for the video, and the version of Nero that came with it crashes not just the app, but reboots my computer completely. And the update/uninstall and reinstall process is horrible. If only that camera came with a simple tool to convert the video to something standard, doing just that, I'd be much happier with the camera.

---

Back to the D300s's video, I don't see how it can be very useful for moving scenes/subjects without autofocus that works well.

One plus about the size of the D300s's sensor and the resulting video is that teleconverters really don't degrade the video quality as far as I can tell. I've been setting focus in still image mode, turning on live view, then adjusting exposure (play button held down + multi-selector UP or DOWN), and then hitting record (center button of multi-selector).

Also, I use the Azden SMX-10 mic for stereo audio. In windy conditions it still picks up a LOT of wind noise, so I need to add a sock or two or something...

-Jon

Susquehanna River MD - Oct 18 2009

Mid-October is not nearly peak for bald eagles at the Dam on the Susquehanna River yet, but it's good there.



This past Sunday it was scheduled to be rainy ALL day, like 90% chance each and every hour according to weather.com. I was so jazzed to go shooting that I woke up around 4am and headed out to another spot on the eastern shore of Maryland and then later wound up at the river.



I counted 50 eagles across the river without even trying in like 15 seconds.













Read on for more including a video...









Virtually no one else was at the river to see the eagles when I got there before noon. Within a few hours a handful of folks showed up. It was a slow day, but this time of year slow is still awesome.



Myself and others spotted an adult eagle with an antenna (ie GPS transmitter) - I think the standard is to track location data and upload it once or twice a day to conserve battery power. If you click to view the larger version you can see the antenna coming out of the back of this eagle



There were also a few banded birds, including this one with a green state band (I forget which state that is, MA/Mass. maybe?):





And this adult that had a blue state band (NY):





For me photographywise the highlight was this bald eagle flying by with a large catfish:











Also, one of the resident Peregrine Falcons flew up river too fast for me to catch a shot early in the day, then later (maybe same bird) one flew by and circled overhead for a brief moment and I managed an ID shot, nothing spectular:







I put together a some video from the morning of the eagles along the water, and as the sirens sounded to warn everyone to take to higher ground as the power generation was about to start. I'm a bit upset with myself because a guy was following me around and kept talking as I was trying to record some clean video. I should have spoke up and or walked away - even if just for 5 minutes, but I didn't. And the guy kept saying something like every 20 seconds whenever I'd hit the record button. So I had to chop up the video and remove audio completely from the last clip.... Fortunately the sirens in the video was still cool.





(note it says 11/18/2009 in the video-text but it was shot on 10/18/2009...)

Octobers Past

I took most of September off from Flickr's daily grind of posting and visiting friends photos... And now I am back at it, posting, etc.

October's going to be awesome. Fall is such a great time in this area (Maryland, Virginia, Delaware - New England!, etc. The birds, the foliage, the cool weather, the later sunrises and earlier sunsets - I just love those changes.

3 Years ago I made my first trip to the Susquehanna River in search of eagles and it was a day like none other, with a real drama that unfolded revealing the character present in so many of the photographers there that day (and DNR's extremely slow response).


Read on for more....


We thought that eagle must have hit the power lines and broke a wing and he then drifted down river.



He was left for dead, then rescued and then a couple of days later at a rehab facility deemed too injured to be rescued...

That same day I got one of my all time favorite bald eagle photos. Since that day I've been a ton of times to the river to see the eagles. Peak time for them (mostly migratory eagles) is Thanksgiving to Christmas.



Some of the other places that I've been in Octobers past are Shenandoah National Park, where late October is good for foliage



and Mason Neck State Park in VA where some fog and a walk on the 'beach' gifted me with an brief encounter with a red fox



And some god-beams peaking through the trees early during a walk at Mason Neck



The river and eagles is probably the highlight of Fall here in Maryland, watch the leaves turn and fall and the eagles arrive, hungry for fish, and less afraid of human proximity than locals - it's a great thing.



I like to go with the flow, and plan for trips and get out shooting a lot, often. But when sunrise is earlier than 6am or the day's heat bring temps at or above 95 degrees I tend to save my energy. But it is the welcome Fall season where heat fades, the sun rises later and the days bristle with color that I make that extra push to get out and shoot.



It's October 1st and the next two months are going to be awesome. I just can't wait. Be it 100 miles away or 10 miles away, there's always something to search for in Fall...........





-Happy Shootin'