New Post on My Birding Blog - Great Blue Heron

Long overdue again, but I finally did it!  Please check it out and do feel free to share it as well: http://shinydewdrop-birdwatching.blogspot.com/2011/09/great-blue-heron-ardea-herodias.html

Day 318 - Chickadees and Great Blue Heron

My shots have been pretty unsatisfactory of late.  I think my bird photography skills have become pretty rusty over the winter months.  :(  But right now, my main motivation to keep clicking is to just get the 365 challenge over and done with, although I haven't strictly adhered to it.  However, I can say this much - I have tried my best, given the set of circumstances.  I am slowly getting to the grand finale, and I can't wait!

Day 85 - Sunrise without the sun

I went out at 4:30 a.m. on Sunday seeing that there were some pretty thick and patchy clouds.  Clouds usually make for interesting sunrises and sunsets, so why not?  It was chilly and pretty windy, but I heeded that not and went up to the new patch of riverside I was exploring the day before.

I was greeted by a great blue heron sitting knee-deep in the shallows.  After waiting for over 45 minutes, I realized that the sunrise wasn't going to happen because a thick cloud cover had rolled in.  So, the sun didn't rise at all.  Instead, the wind was bone-chilling and then there was rain!

I'm lucky this guy was so motionless - this was taken at 1.6s, f/5.6, ISO 100, to give the effect of the heron standing knee-deep in silky waters.

This was taken seconds later and the guy was doing something totally different.  It was no small luck that I got both the shots the way I wanted them!

But the highlights were that I spotted two new birds - the yellow warbler and the song sparrow although I have no good photographs of them.  Low light, small birds, and a 250 mm lens don't go a long way to getting good shots.  I also saw a juvenile red-winged blackbird that the parents were guarding fiercely.   It's a great time of year to see the young 'uns.

A not so good shot of the yellow warbler.  I have to find ways to improve these shots.  I'm losing too many good photo ops.  Usually these small birds are very active and hide in the foliage very high up on tall trees.  Go figure!  

This is the baby red-winged blackbird that was sitting not too far away from where I positioned myself.  I had almost passed it by, but the slight movement in the foliage alerted me to this little guy's presence. :-)
  

Day 62 - Great Blue Heron

Got to see this guy at long last.  Watched it for close to three hours, hoping that I could snap him while he was in flight as well, but that would be expecting too much!

These shots are from earlier in the day: