The early bird gets the berries

While I had trouble the other day getting a clear shot of a yellow-rumped warbler eating berries, I was able to get one this morning at the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm.

I can’t say whether it was one of the birds I saw Sunday, but it was the same tree that the bird was on a little after 8’clock. That yellow-rumped warbler was the most exotic species I’d see in about an hour on an otherwise quiet morning.

I arrived at the park as dawn was breaking at 7:25 a.m. I’m looking forward to our return to standard time over the weekend. I’ll be able to have more time and daylight to go birding each morning before hustling home and getting off to work.

Sunset will come an hour earlier, too, but that doesn’t affect me because I rarely get home before 5 p.m. most days. On late fall and winter weekends, I like the earlier sunsets because I can finish birding soon enough to get home at a reasonable hour for dinner.

Our late afternoon sunsets in December correspond to the arrival of short-eared owls and perhaps a few long-eared ones. It won’t be long before that spectacle returns. 🦅

So close: a day of ‘almost’ shots

Take a look at the yellow-rumped warbler topping this post. The bird is in profile high up in a tree, eying a cluster of berries. A moment later, the bird would have one of those berries in its beak, but that shot was blurred.

Another frame shows the bird with its beak plunged into the bunch, a shot a split second too early or too late to show peak action.

Yellow-rumped warbler poking its beak into a cluster of berries on a tree branch.
It’s sharp, but this image misses the proper berry-selecting moment.

Such was my day today in two outings, the morning at the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm and the afternoon at the Dyson Tract along the Delaware and Raritan canal.

I didn’t get a killer shot but I did get more acclimated to my Canon EOS R7. I’m getting the hang of the electronic viewfinder and the focusing indicators. My new backup batteries are charging , so I’m no longer worried about running out of power.

One of the ironies of having this mirrorless camera is that with its blazingly fast electronic shutter, I’m shooting dozens more frames than before but my percentage of “in focus” photos is dramatically down.

At the Dyson Tract, I had plenty of white-throated sparrows to shoot, but they were distant and tricky. They zipped in and out of branches and tucked behind leaves. The crispest shot I got of one shows the bird obscured by a leaf and branch..

White-throated sparrow perched on a branch, partially obscured by a branch and a green leaf.
The catchlight is nice, but that leaf and branch detract significantly from the photo.

Merlin gave me a few hits on swamp sparrows, which I have scrupulously not posted on e-Bird because I want to see one and note a confirmed sighting. I didn’t pick one out in the field, but my camera card proved I had seen and recorded one. The two shots verified ID but were not worth saving or sharing.

For a few minutes I staked out a chokeberry bush while a song sparrow perched in the purple branches. It looked left, looked back and looked right but it never came out fully onto one of the branches. What’s below is the best I could get.

Song sparrow perched a mid the red branches of a chokeberry bush.
Song sparrow in the chokeberry bush.

Better photo days are ahead as I’m determined to improve my handling of my new camera. Thanks for reading along.

Giving my new Canon R7 a workout

I took today off from work in anticipation of great fall weather to give my new Canon EOS R7 camera a second-day workout. I’d taken the camera out to the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm on Thursday morning. With the high-speed auto advance blazing, I shot 162 frames — maybe 10 of which were in focus.

Annoyingly, the camera kept shutting off every few minutes, forcing me to switch it off and on to get it to come to attention. Those shots also exhausted the battery, which had been charging overnight.

Scouring Google and YouTube for solutions to my power problems, I learned that a firmware update was available to fix problems with the camera restarting after power-offs. I also figured out how to lengthen the time it takes for the camera and the electronic viewfinder to power off.

This morning at the Pole Farm, the battery held up long enough to get me through a 90-minute outing and firing more than 200 frames. Some of them turned out relatively well, and for the first time since getting the camera I started to relax with it.

The Pole Farm highlights included a pair of hermit thrushes sunning themselves high up in a tree and a couple of opportunities to shoot Northern harriers.

Hermit thrush basking.
A Northern harries takes off from a tree branch.

Later in the morning, I headed to Trenton for a visit to John A. Roebling Park and the adjoining marsh. The birds were few but they were photogenic. Two great blue herons practically gave another birder and me a modeling session, one standing on a trail and the other (at top of post) perched on the wooden bridge that leads to the back island portion of the marsh.

I also took a few shots of a small bird low down amid some shady trees. The bird turned out to be a yellow-rumped warbler that proves the name is justified.

The myrtle yellow-rumped warbler, which briefly popped into a sunny spot.

Late in the afternoon, I went to the Pole Farm again for a short walk. Besides two female harriers, I also spotted the much less common male “gray ghost.” The photos proved the ID but aren’t sharp enough to share.

As the sun sets and I get ready to grill steaks for dinner, I’m pleased with how today’s outings went. I look forward to what the R7 and I can do as I get more accustomed to its sophisticated features. 🦅

A new Canon R7. Bring on the birds!

Well, it’s a start. The American robin topping this post was the first bird photo I was able to snap with my new Canon EOS R7 camera that arrived Monday. What followed was a series of unfortunate events.

The first was that the adapter I need to mount my older-generation lenses was delayed a day and delivered yesterday. After work, I fixed the adapter on the camera and mounted the kit lens from my old Canon Rebel XT. I took a few test shots of my wife and fiddled with the settings a bit before putting it away, anticipating a morning of birding today.

It was not to be. When I hit the trail at the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm a little after sunrise, the camera would not turn on. Anguish. Worry. And maybe a few foul words uttered under my breath as another birder stopped to see what the problem was.

I drove home and put the battery on the charger. It was dead. Even though I’d charged it a full three hours before exploring the menus Monday evening and the battery meter was on full when I turned the camera off last night, the battery ran out of charge.

Leaving the battery on the charger for the day, I called Canon service when I got to my office. The very helpful and sympathetic Canon rep asked me a few questions and said that I would have done better to leave the battery on the charger overnight.

He advised me to see how things go for the next day or two. If the camera doesn’t perform, I should send it back to Amazon, although I have ordered two extra batteries.

Fortunately, when I got home from work a short while ago, the camera turned on when I inserted the battery, which had been on the charger for about 10 hours.

Moments later, I spotted a chickadee on the feeder near our living room window. I wasn’t quick enough to get a shot of the little cutie, but a couple of robins were just beyond our yard on one of the tees on the adjoining golf course.

The robin shot above was literally the first bird photo I took with the camera. The picture is one I’d never post under normal circumstances. I wouldn’t even save it. But I’ve placed it as a marker in anticipation of many good photos to come and a few laughs at my own expense.

I’ll go back out with the camera tomorrow morning — after the battery has had a good night’s sleep nestled in the charger. 🦅

My old camera comes out of retirement

With my Canon SL2 acting up (or rather, shutting down), I put my old Canon Rebel XT into service today. It did a creditable job, at least as long as the battery lasted.

Topping this post is a shot of a yellow-rumped/myrtle warbler that settled in a tree at the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm. Fully in the sun, the bird was perched amid the beautiful red leaves of a maple tree.

I took about two dozen photos as I made a loop around the park, and I was frustrated to see the battery level sink dangerously low and then expire. The battery didn’t last an hour, even with it shut off when no birds were within sight.

I charged the battery for a few hours and headed out at mid-afternoon to the Millstone River Impoundment in Princeton. This time, the battery level dropped to near zero within about 20 minutes. But not before I was able to sneak around some bushes and get a close-up profile of a great blue heron.

Considering that I was using a backup camera with unexpectedly low battery life, I’m pleased to have ended up with a couple of fine shots. The battery is back on the charger, and I’ll insert it into the XT for tomorrow’s outing.

Meanwhile, I’m still trying to figure out where I stashed that camera’s other battery. As for the SL2, my nearby camera shop could repair it, but I’m thinking instead it’s time to make the move to a mirrorless camera.

Great blue heron in profile, framed by tree leaves.
Great blue heron at the Millstone River Impoundment. I can’t say for sure, but I reckon it’s a resident.

An Eastern meadowlark amid fall color

I follow a number of blogs that are short on text and long on images. So for a change to my usual chatty m.o., here’s a photo of an Eastern Meadowlark that I spotted at the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm on Saturday morning. I am pleased with it, and I hope you like it, too.

Surviving a scare with my camera

The camera I use on my birding outings, a Canon SL2, is getting on in years, and I’ve had a few cases of the shutter failing to fire in recent months. None was so alarming as what I experienced this morning while visiting the Reed-Bryan Farm side of Mercer Meadows.

The camera wouldn’t even turn on. None of my usual tricks — turning the camera on and off a few times, reseating the battery and the lens — would work. The camera was dead, I concluded as I sat on a low fence looking at a Northern flicker that was nibbling in a tree not 20 feet from me at eye level. A perfect photo opportunity, lost.

By then, I was resigned to knowing that I’d take no photos with my Canon on that outing, but I hoped I might somehow bring it back to life. When I got home, my first thought was to replace the battery. With the backup inserted, the camera sprang back to life. Whew — what a relief.

At 9:30, the sun was still shining, and the birds beckoned me back. I drove to the Pole Farm and saw only a few photo opportunities. One was of a catbird munching on some berries in a tree in a deer-fenced area by the old AT&T Building One site. I shot through the fence and got the photo topping this post and the one below.

It gave me a scare, but my trusty Canon came through for me in the end.

A gray catbird stretches for a berry.

Catch a kinglet if you can!

My birding friend Nancy and I had a nice stroll trough the main trails of the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm this morning. Noticing little action as we made our way up the central dirt path, we had better luck once we reached the woods and the area near the old AT&T Building One site.

The trees were quiet at first, but Nancy soon spotted quick-moving birds in the smaller trees behind a deer fence. I ambled over to join her, and we started tracking a couple of ruby-crowned kinglets dashing from branch to branch.

Kinglets are small and flighty, never setting for more than a few seconds on any particular branch or cluster of leaves that strikes their fancy. Nancy and I had our lenses trained on the trees wherever we saw movement, but the kinglets seemed to get the better of us.

Nancy and I joked about how we were getting great shots of leaves and branches, and we each hoped that we’d have at least one decent shot. Ace birder Jim Parris soon joined us, and we walked through the Building One oval and turned right onto the Lawrence-Hopewell trail.

More kinglets were zipping about the low trees there, and Jim was the first to pick out the song of winter wren that was lurking in the low branches mere feet from us. I wasn’t able to get a photo of the little fellow but I did see him pop out for a moment.

While Jim turned to follow the trail farther back, Nancy and I lingered a few minutes before turning toward our cars. We shot toward a few more kinglets, which for me would result in the photo topping this post.

The kinglet doesn’t show a ruby crown, but I did catch it stationary for the split second it took my shutter to trip. I found one other fair kinglet shot on my photo card — one with the kinglet, wings spread, flying away from me.

By the “one good shot makes for a good day” formula, this was a good day.

Ruby-crowned kinglet flying into a tree, it's back turned to the photographer.
A ruby-crowned kinglet flies away into a tree.

Backyard bluebirds = joy

While I’m fortunate to see Eastern bluebirds during much of the year on my birding outings, it’s rare to see them at home. Two of them surprised my wife and me a few mornings back as we were eating breakfast at the kitchen table. One perched briefly on our suet feeder while another hung out at the base of one of the trees to which our hammock is attached.

On Saturday, another glorious fall day, I sat on our patio late in the afternoon, drinking a beer (OK, 2 beers!) while listening to the Mets-Phillies game through my iPhone. Another bluebird appeared, perching on a small trellis that borders a bed for day lilies along the line between our property and the golf course adjacent to our lot.

That bird spent about 10 minutes surveying things from the trellis, and at one point I thought I should sneak into the house and grab my camera. But, no, I decided to stay put and gaze happily at the bluebird, a pleasant sight that lingers still in memory, no photo needed.

The photo topping this post is from a while back, conjuring up more memories of the beautiful sialia sialis.  🦅

An outing with the awesome Princeton Birding Society

Today promised to be a perfect day for birding: the sun was shining, the temperature was headed from the low 50s into the 70s, and birdcast.info estimated that 3.4 million birds had flown over Mercer County overnight. The best factor of all: I would join the Princeton Birding Society on a warbler walk at the Charles Rogers Preserve and the Institute Woods in Princeton.

The birding society is the student birding group at Princeton University. I’d met up with them two years ago during Spring migration. The group is a mix of advanced birders (Princeton won the World Series of Birding in 2022) and newcomers to the hobby/obsession.

Students line a trail, scanning the trees for birds.
The students scan the trees for birds.

We spent two and a half hours wandering the trails in the woods, and the student logging the sightings for the group came up with 36 species. I listed 29 for myself and was plenty satisfied.

The best warbler activity we observed was at the end of the visit, when we wandered past the preserve parking lot to a crossroads where a couple of trails intersect.

We saw a dizzying display of warblers in the trees: yellow-rumped, blackpoll and Cape May, an unexpected pleasure after spotting pine and palm warblers earlier in the walk.

While today was a good one for sightings, my photos didn’t quite measure up. The best I could do was this shot of the myrtle version of a yellow-rumped warbler.

Myrle warbler in the trees — one of the few moments it wasn’t flitting about.

With 12 of us walking through the woods, we surely saw more birds than any one of us would have walking solo. I admire the students who organize the club for sharing their enthusiasm and knowledge of birds freely with others — college students and the occasional university staffer who joins them on their outings. 🦅