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Well, for a change,
I've got a short report to do. On Sunday the 12th of September
I slept in. I was all tuckered out from the big day I'd had on
the 11th, including the 8km blustery walk to the end of the jetty.
And then I had stayed up pretty late to look through my photos.
So I let myself get some rest.
I got up around noon
and after breakfast at Denny's (the only places in town that seem
to serve grits), I made it to Iona around 2 pm. Yes, I'd just
been there the day before, but I was hoping to see a Sharp-tailed
Sandpiper, several of which had been reported there.
I spent two hours at
Iona, but didn't see anything particularly unusual. There were
the usual Savannah Sparrows, like this one.
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| Things were
so quiet that I even ended up taking pictures of the Mallards there.
Here's one that turned out fairly nicely. |
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I like the wood-grain-like
plumage patterns on her body.
There weren't as many
shorebirds at the ponds as there were the day before. I took a
few close-ups of Long-billed Dowitchers. Here's one I liked, because
his head looks so silvery and flat. This particular individual
is a juvenile Long-billed Dowitcher, which one can tell by the
grey head and breast along with the red trim on the feathers of
the back. Juvenile Short-billed Dowitchers look almost exactly
the same, except the long wing feathers have light-colored bars
on them.
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| Here's a
shot of two of the dowitchers. This shot is photographically interesting
to me for a couple of reasons. The first is the way that the telephoto
lens I use "flattens out" the image; the two birds look
pasted one on top of the other (rather than looking well separated
in three dimensions). Second, there is a short depth-of-field (area
of focus): the rear bird is out of focus, but the front one is in
focus. I go back and forth on whether or not I really like the effect
or not. Sometimes I feel this works as a photo, and sometimes I
feel it doesn't. |
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I can probably fix
it in Photoshop if I really end up deciding I don't like it. Or
maybe I'd just leave it be...
Back at the ponds,
I happened to look up once when a few American Wigeons were flying
in roughly my direction, and I took some shots of them in flight.
Here they are coming towards me.
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here they are going past me. This photo has been surgically altered
to reduce the distance between the Wigeons, making for a more pleasing
composition. (There used to be three or four times as much distance
between them.) I don't normally do such radical alterations to my
images. |
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| That was
about all that I got out at Iona. When I did eventually get home,
I found that my cat Zippy was waiting for me outside my condo. Since
I had my camera with me, I took the opportunity to shoot a few portraits
of him. |
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And that's all for
my day. Next time, I'll bring you another magnum opus from another
full day's shooting at Iona.
Your uncharacteristically
restrained photographer,
Tom
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