Last night, I was just sitting around watching the Red Wings (the Hockey team - not the bird) beat Dallas when out the window appears a first time bird for me. It was large..certainly larger than the Chickadees and Sparrows; about the size of a crow.

"Quick dear! Grab the camera!!", I call/whisper.

Slowly I get the camera up to the glass of the door and I squeeze off a few shots, cursing the late evening light. As I open the door ever so slowly the bird freezes and then flies off. Gone.

I run upstairs to the PC, download the shots and process them. I check out my bird book… It turns out that I saw a Band Tailed Pigeon. Definitely prettier than the rock pigeons we always see.

Here he is with a bit of noise… Like I said it was darker than I would have liked:

Shot with the Canon 40D and 100-300mm 4.5-5.6 lens.

Thursday, I was down at Burnaby Lake after dinner with Mrs. D.  It was pretty late and the little sparrows were out and singing, the blackbirds were settling down and there were a lot less ducks and geese than during the early evening times.  Surprisingly, I saw a duck that I could swear was a mandarin duck.  Mrs. D saw it too, but doesn’t know her ducks well enough to confirm.  This would have been my first ever sighting of one of these lovely birds.  No camera… no picture.

Well, I wasn’t going to let that stop me.  On Friday, as soon as I got home I zipped down to the lake again with the hope of seeing my Mandarin again.  There he was!  He was even hopping up on the shore to eat some seeds!! Excitement.  Get the camera, shoot a few pics! Got him!  Here he is:

I also finally managed a Red Winged Blackbird in flight:

This little Savannah sparrow was a first time for me too:

This male cowbird was kind enough to pose for me and give me that nice creamy bokeh for a background:

Of course the bird scenery is dominated by goslings and ducklings now, so here are some shots of Geese and Goslings:

Mom is never far behind:

Looking after the little ones can be pretty tiring:

All that sitting and sleeping… Naturally a bird’s gotta stretch:

I happened to turn around from my stretching goose to catch this squadron coming in for a landing to roost for the evening:

Then we have the "Gene Simmons Fan Club":

Spring is SUCH a great time to get out and take pictures.  Everything is starting fresh and growing up!

All pictures taken with the Canon 40D and the 100-300mm 4.5-5.6 lens.

Back after we finished camp, I promised I’d get a log posted.

This is the log of the camp as written by one of our 11 year old Scouts:

This bike camp is fun. I had a lot of fun with my bike.  We went uphill and downhill.  Even though the uphills were hard it was still good excercise.  The downhill riding was very exciting.  I like going down hills you can go very fast.

Bike camp is fun.  We made a campfire that I also really enjoyed.  We sat around the fire and sang songs and played.  I really enjoyed looking at the stars in the sky at night.  The stars are beautiful.  The hike on Sunday was good.  I learned a lot and saw old rocks that can easily break.  It was very cool.  There were little crabs under the rocks that were very interesting and funny to watch as they scurried around.  The seas and the beaches were beautiful.  The beach isn’t made of sand at all, but rather millions of cracked shells.  The path along the hike was very hard to walk on at some places, but I liked it.

I really enjoyed this bike camp, even though it was short.  It was my first time to go to camp on my bike.  I was surprised how hard the uphills were and how exciting the downhills were. I will definitely go to the next biking camp because I love it.

Count me as NOT impressed!

I’ve talked about Foldershare before and mentioned how good it is.

That just changed.   MS have forced an "upgrade" to a new version.  Win2K NOT supported

Well shucks - great way to kill off a product guys.

There is so little code that should require XP only… Come on, this is ridiculous.

Apparently I’ve got to go look into some nice little open source tool called Unison

The never ending revisions for this trip continue.  I think we’ve got a better idea of the what and where now:

The daily itinerary looks like this… Comments?

Any travel that isn’t indicated otherwise is by a rental car.  Anyone know the blest place to rent a nice little Turbo Diesel Automatic in London?

Day 1 Fly Canada to London Heathrow
Day 2 Arr London
Day 3-4 London
Day 5 London->Bath->Manchester
Day 6 Chester
Day 7 Manchester->Glasgow->Oban->Fort William
Day 8 Fort William->Dundee->Edinburgh->Newcastle-Upon-Tyne
Day 9 Newcastle-Upon-Tyne via the coast->Harwich
Night of 9 Ferry From Harwich->Hook of Holland
Day 10 Hook of Holland-> The Hague (afternoon Maduradam)
Day 11 kinderdjik + Other?
Day 12 The Hague->Brussels->Luxemburg
Day 13 Luxemburg->Neuschwanstein Castle
Day 14 Neuschwanstein Castle->Mullheim
Day 15 Mullheim->Orleans
Day 16 Orleans->Chartes->Paris (Versailles)
Day 17 Paris
Day 18 Paris
Day 19 Paris (Versailles)-> Beaches of Normandy->Dieppe->-Vimy->Ypres
Day 20 Ypres->Calais->Dover-London (Ferry)
Day 21 London
Day 22 London->Canada

While out at Reifel with the scouts on the 20th I also saw this downy woodpecker building his home.  I decided to make a post just for him because it was the first time I have seen one and got such a good photo of one.  I was pretty excited when I got home and found that focus and lighting worked just RIGHT for this little fellow:

His full sized photo can be seen here.

He was probably no more than 6m from me!  Just working away and seeming not bothered by the 50 kids that stopped to watch him.

We were out at the Reifel Bird Sanctuary… AGAIN last week (April 20th, 2008). If you were there and noticed the swarm of 50 people in yellow and black jackets…  Sorry. I know it wasn’t exactly the quiet relaxing time you had hoped for, but it was an incredibly educational experience for the kids!  This time I brought the 28th Vancouver Cubs and Beavers out to see the birds.  Mr Ireland, the manager  is a  REALLY great guy, super knowledgeable about birds and I think he just might be a bit more patient than Job was

It was a cool day, with a high of only about 8C but there was sun so it wasn’t too bad.  I shot bird pics with my 40D while Mrs D shot kid pics with her 400D and one of the scouts shot with the Powershot S60.  We had about 300 photos to sift through and came up with about 100 or so that really gave the flavour of the trip.  You can see the whole gallery at the 28th Scouts Page.

Here are a few of my favourite bird pictures:

Male Ring Necked Duck (a rare visitor to the sanctuary):

Male Redwinged Blackbird in full song:

Great Blue Heron keeping an eye on things:

Mrs Mallard having a rest but keeping an eye on me:

Brown creeper (gravity doesn’t seem to apply to these guys):

This was a first ever sighting for me of this little guy.  Very cool!

Mr Great Horned Owl keeping a watchful eye over the nest:

Rufous hummingbird:

Male Northern Pintail:

For all the larger sized photos of these birds, please visit their fotothing pages:

http://www.fotothing.com/DragonSpeed/photo/188/
http://www.fotothing.com/DragonSpeed/photo/189/

Another successful birding outing - DESPITE the 50 people

It has been cold and rainy (and even snowy) recently. I was SOO glad that I could get out and shoot some of our complex’s flowers with my macro that I have been DYING to use.  Well - Here they are:

Clicking on the small photo will bring you to my FOTOTHING page with the image.

These were all shot with the Canon 40D, 100mm F/2.8 macro lens using natural light.

In the morning before going out shooting, I went with my Cubs to the Kerrisdale Days parade.  There was a small turnout from Scout groups :(  I think it may have been because it coincided with Earth day activities down at Jericho beach on Saturday.  No matter.  The group that WAS there enjoyed a good parade and had fun.

The 40th Marpole Scouts went on a bike camp to Montague Harbour on Galiano Island this past weekend.  The weather was beautiful, sunny and warm - In stark contrast to the barely 10C weather we’ve been having.  I hope to get one of our Scouts’ log from the trip.  In the mean time… some photos.  The load might be a bit slow.  There are 100 photos from the trip. 

http://www.slacker.ca/brian/webpics/showpix.aspx?20080413Galiano

I apologize for the quality of some of the shots.  They were kept so as to be more of a story telling series rather than quality.  I tried some action panning shots, but they were tough!

Log coming soon.  Enjoy.

2008-05-06: One of the camp logs is now posted

Parents and leaders that had taken the Beavers down to the Science World Sleepover left in the morning to find that some knob had keyed their cars.  Nice.  Real nice.  It’s nice to see that there are losers out there making sure that no good deed goes unpunished

On Sunday we were out at the Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary with the cubs.  I got a few decent shots.

Great Horned Owl:

Canon 40D 100-300mm @  300mm 1/800s F/5.6 ISO 1600

2. Northern Shoveller (A first for me)

Canon 40D 100-300mm @  1/800s F/5.6 ISO 200

3. A classic bird at the sanctuary - Sandhill Crane…. Staring me down:

Canon 40D  100-300mm @ 300mm 1/250s F/9 ISO 200

4. Sandhill Crane (profile view)

Canon 40D 100-300mm @ 300mm 1/640s F/9 ISO 200

You can also find these guys at my Fotothing photo blog

Yesterday, I decided to try my luck with the birds again.  Black Capped Chickadees this time.   I’m pretty happy with my results:

Canon 40D 100-300USM @300 ISO 400 w/ on body flash used for fill.
1.
1/250s F/5.6

2.

1/250s F/7.1

3.

1/250s F/8 

They can also be found on my Fotothing free photo blog

I’ve taken some advice from the folks at POTN and have tried to shoot my local birds in the trees AROUND the balcony rather than while they were at the seed.  This went better.  The chickadees were very comfortable even flitting in to get a bite while I stood next to the seed, but the juncos were much more skittish.  Since the light was dark I decided to kick in the built in flash.  This limited me to 1/250s but I was able to set a smaller aperture.  The problem is that when the flash goes off, the birds take off VERY fast :(  I got a few shots of birds with wings in full flash and their butts to me… Urrgh.  Patience and a LOT of pictures later, I came up with about 5 decent shots.

The site that hosts them unfortunately has the 550px preview a bit dark, so you’ll have to click on the picture to open up the 1024px shot at its INTENDED brightness.  Enjoy!

Photos taken with Canon 40D, 100-300mm, usually at 300mm USM F/4.5-5.6 EXIF available on the fullsized pics.

1. Black Capped Chickadee

2. Another Black Capped Chickadee

3. Dark Eyed Junco (Oregon) coyly hiding in the fir

4. Dark Eyed Junco (Oregon) at "the feeder" 

5. Dark Eyed Junco (Oregon) finally sitting on a branch!

Constant improvement… that’s my goal.  

I’ve taken to shooting more birds again

1. I’ve started putting feed out on our balcony railing outside our living room.

   This has had the fun effect of bringing in all kinds of little (and large birds).  I now have seen darkeyed juncos (Oregon variety), black-capped chickadees, stellar’s jays and (somewhat surprisingly) crows.  The chickadees appear to be afraid of the juncos and they all seem to fear the crows.  The crows, on the other hand are really afraid of me while the chickadees don’t seem to care.  It’s quite an interesting "pecking order"

2. It’s springtime and the ducks and other birds down at Burnaby lake are all trying to "get lucky", so their plumage is at its prime right now.  With the still relatively dull light of spring it’s a bit challenging, but there are some beautiful species down at the lake these days.

Here are my most recent shots…the version here is a bit dark, but if you click on it, you’ll get a larger (and brighter) version with better contrast with all the EXIF data intact for those that like to see what I used for settings. Shots are all taken with a Canon 40D and the Canon 100-300mm USM lens.

Backyard birds:

1. Dark Eyed Junco:
   
2.  
   
3.  
   
4.  
   
5. Black-capped Chickadee - doing the speedskating pose
    

Lake Birds

1. Male Bufflehead
   
2.  Song Sparrow
   
3.  Male Redwinged Blackbird
   
4.  Mallard pair (sometimes you DON’T want the head )
   
5.  Male Wood Duck
   

I hope you enjoyed the pictures!

For those of you that have been using the great File sync/sharing app called Foldershare, the boys at previously named ByteTaxi (now part of MS) have put out a new version finally!

If you are using any older version, you should get the new one.  It apparently is better and smoother than the (very) old version.

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