After breakfast it was back up to the top of the tower for more birds, now including several species of swallows and swifts that had woken up with the insects and a large flight of raptors that was taking advantage of the warming thermals to climb. Seen lifers were:
The scent of eggs pulled us down from the roof for 45 minutes or so around 7:30 AM, but that didn’t stop the birding. During breakfast, we kept running to the windows as new birds appeared. Over scrambled eggs and sausage stew, we managed 11 species including 9 lifers:
Today I woke up at 5:30 AM, grabbed my binoculars, walked upstairs, and ticked off 11 life birds (or 12 if you count a heard only birds) with my morning coffee. The first was a Golden Hooded Tanager. I didn’t get a picture of this one, so how about this shot of number four, a somewhat less impressive but more cooperative Palm Tanager:
Needless to say this wasn’t in the United States. Rather I’m down in Central America at Panama’s Canopy Tower for the next seven days or so.
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Assume ideal conditions:
Is any lens /camera combination going to be able to resolve details that are a pixel’s width apart? If not, how close do the best one’s get?
Of course different cameras have different pixel sizes. Larger cameras usually have larger pixels. So perhaps the answer should be measured in microns. How many microns can the best lenses resolve?
The problem with photographing insects in New York is that I get maybe 4 good months, and then it’s back to birds for 8 months. By the time insect season rolls around again, I’ve forgotten what I figured out last time. So once and for all, let me write this down.
FYI, these settings are all for relatively stationary insects and a 1:1 100mm macro lens. Butterflies and dragonflies (i.e. large flying insects) with a telephoto lens are something else entirely.
Consider using a tripod, cable release, and/or reflector.
Yesterday morning Doug Gochfeld, the eBird moderator for Kings County, alerted us that an apparent Gray-hooded Gull had been found and photographed on Monday in Coney Island. Apparently it was initially misidentified as a Black-headed Gull–a rare but not mega-rare species around here–so no one paid much attention. It wasn’t until some experts got a look at the photographs to confirm the Black-headed Gull ID that someone realized that this in fact was not a a Black-headed Gull at all at all but instead the Southern Hemisphere species Gray-hooded Gull! A few hardy souls traipsed out to Coney Island yesterday, and around 5:00 PM Shane Blodgett relocated the bird. I heard this around 6:30 PM and decided there wasn’t quite enough light left to make the trek out to Coney Island, which was fortunate because, as I later learned, the bird took off before I could have even left, and only a handful of folks spotted it. The rest were left searching in the rain.
This morning I hear there were upwards of seventy birders scanning the beaches early in the AM. However since the bird had flown off the previous night, and was more likely to be found nearer the second high tide, I decided to hang out in my air conditioned apartment and take the chance that if it was seen again I could get out there fast enough before it took off again.
Around noon, word went out that the bird had just flown in to the same location, so I hopped the S to the Q to Coney Island. I got off at 8th Street/New York Aquarium and walked west down the boardwalk. Somehow I managed to miss the gaggle of birders, and got all the way to 23rd street before I got a phone call telling me to head back east to the Wonder Wheel. And when I arrived, there the bird was, perched on a volleyball pole. Or was it? I swear I couldn’t tell if I was looking at a Laughing Gull or a Gray-hooded Gull. But then the bird took off and flew right past me, and at close range in flight it was a lot more obvious. Bingo! #542. A little later the bird returned and posed for photos:
