(click on image for larger version)
My intent was to spend several hours in Pheasant Branch Conservancy this morning to digiscope, but I bumped into a couple of people and did more talking than digiscoping. Hey, that’s all right. I get a lot of enjoyment from pointing out what birds I’m seeing to other folks, both birder and non-birder. The highlight of the morning came when I pointed out a Carolina Wren I had heard earlier to a birder who had never seen one before. We got a nice view of it just across the stream perched right out in the open – oh, what a grand digiscoping opportunity I let pass. There’s always next time, right?
The Tufted Titmice were very active with some foraging on the ground and others singing away in the upper-story – the most vocal of all the birds in the corridor. A few days ago I was experimenting with the various image quality settings on my new camera and inadvertently left it on .TIFF mode (a very large file format). I followed one Tufted Titmouse with my scope as it foraged and took a shot…and the camera began to record the image to the media card…
recording…
recording…
recording…
Wow - it really takes a long time to write those 24 megabyte files – it seemed like an eternity as I continued to monitor the titmouse’s activity. It ended up being the only picture taken for the entire morning – a one shot deal. By the time the file was finished writing to the media card, the titmouse was further back up the hill. It’s not the best image of a Tufted Titmouse, but it accurately portrays what the bird was doing and isn’t so much “a bird on a stick” as Cindy likes to say. Nevertheless, I’ll have to go back and try to obtain a better “portrait” of one some other day.
Here are the birds that were present this morning:
Cooper's Hawk (fly over)
Killdeer (fly over / heard call)
American Crow
Blue Jay
Black-capped Chickadee
Tufted Titmouse
Red-breasted Nuthatch
White-breasted Nuthatch
Brown Creeper
Carolina Wren (what a singer!)
American Robin
Dark-eyed Junco
Northern Cardinal
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Red-bellied Woodpecker
American Goldfinch
Pine Siskin
House Finch
Tufted Titmouse image © 2006 Mike McDowell