David Buckley and I were cruising the roads of Okanogan County, Washington today. David got three lifers, getting his Lower 48 and ABA lists to 600. Our new friend, found standing on the road just minding its own business (shown below), wasn’t one of the lifers, but it certainly was one of the highlights of the day.
Ruffed Grouse
If you’ve ever chased a vagrant or have been at a hawkwatch, you’ve probably heard someone say it. After a long period of not seeing anything, someone will say that they’re offering themselves as a sacrifice — they’re leaving so that the bird everyone is looking for will show up or that activity will pick up. Rarely does it work.
Unfortunately for one person, but fortunately for another person, it did work on our recent St. John’s trip. Everyone’s main target when visiting St. John’s is Yellow-legged Gull (unless there’s a Lapwing or Redwing around). In North America, it only occurs regularly at this location. Weather and luck conspired against finding the Yellow-legged for most of the tour. One person left early, empty-handed (the early departure was planned before the tour started). Then two hours after dropping him off at the airport, our group found a Yellow-legged (photos by Jared Clark below).
I don’t know if it’s related, but the tour ended this morning and a Redwing was found in the afternoon. D’oh!
The review of my new Canon 7D DSLR has been delayed largely due to the weather here in the lovely Pacific Northwest. As you might imagine, it’s been raining. Raining quite a bit, actually, and I’ve been hoping to first test the camera out on a sunny day. This past Saturday actually had some sunshine, and I was able to do some comparison shots with my 30D. One of the first things that I discovered was that I’m not very good at manually focusing the new camera, so I’ll need to work on that before I can really get into comparing image quality.
However, in the meantime, I can say that the 7D’s viewfinder is impressive. It’s very bright and sharp (and that’s why I’m surprised by my focusing problems). The LCD screen is equally impressive. Both the viewfinder and LCD screen are way beyond the 30D’s. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything if I use the camera and my 400mm lens instead of my binoculars to look at a bird. Now I’m not saying that the camera is a replacement for my binoculars — I’m sure the view through the bins is still better, and I’ll probably start noticing the difference the more I use the camera — but I won’t be terribly disappointed if I can only look at a bird through the 7D.
Well, there haven’t been any additional Northern Lapwings in Newfoundland reported to nf.birds and the weather conditions have changed, but the Zugunruhe tour group did see one of the previously-reported birds this morning. It took them a whole half-hour to find it. Jared spotted it sleeping in a field. Good work, gentlemen!
That makes a 100% success rate for lapwings on our “official” tours: we’re two-for-two. I say “official” because I’m not counting my scouting trip. That one was lapwingless, and I have to say I will be really surprised if we get another lapwing on a future tour.
Over the past several days, three Northern Lapwings have been reported in eastern Newfoundland. As you would expect, the local birders are excited, but they’re not just excited about those three lapwings. They’re excited that there could be more to come.
There have been several significant invasions of Northern Lapwings to the maritime provinces of Canada. The largest was in December 1927 when hundreds, possibly thousands, were found, primarily in Newfoundland. A smaller invasion occurred in January 1966. Both invasions occurred when there was bad weather in western Europe and easterly winds over the North Atlantic.
Northern Lapwing seen on our Dec 2008 tour
The reason for the excitement is that the same conditions are occurring right now, plus Ireland has seen huge numbers of thrushes (Redwing, Fieldfare, Song Thrush) arriving, presumably from points east and perhaps continuing west, so Newfoundland’s birders are looking for more than just lapwings. Jack Snipe is also on their minds.
I’m excited because our 2010 Newfoundland tour starts today (OK, the birding won’t actually begin until Saturday), so I’m hoping the participants will see a lapwing and possibly another European species or two. St. John’s birder Jared Clark will be leading the tour, so I’ll be missing out on the fun this time around, but remarkably, we had a lapwing on the previous Newfoundland tour (photo above). It was a great “bonus bird” for the trip list.
It’s been too long since my last post. I’ll place the blame squarely on the holidays.
Anyway, I bought the controversial Canon 7D DSLR a few days ago. I say “controversial” because the reviews vary from proclaiming it to be the best crop-factor* DSLR ever to no better than a Canon Rebel that costs about 1/3-third the 7D’s price. (*A crop-factor DSLR has a sensor smaller than a 35mm film frame, and makes the apparent focal length of a given lens longer than what it actually is, i.e., the image is magnified compared to a DSLR with a full-sized sensor or a 35mm film camera.)
That’s one of the problems with the internets: you can easily find the full range of opinions and reviews on absolutely everything. In the coming days, I will add to that morass and provide you with my own review of the camera! I plan on approaching it not so much from a technical, pixel-peeping viewpoint but more of a look at real-world results.
I haven’t done any serious testing of the camera yet, so the review will have to wait, but I have learned one thing about video playback. You can find more than a few complaints about dropped frames online. Quite a few people suggest the problem is using a memory card that’s too fast. Some blame the camera itself. But it appears the actual problem is the computer, particularly the software used for viewing the playback. I was experiencing the same problem — jerky movement caused by missing frames — when watching the playback on my computer. I was using an old (i.e., not the fastest) CF card, so that shouldn’t have been a problem, and then I reformatted the card as suggested. Still had dropped frames, but the playback looked fine on the camera, so the problem had(?) to be on the computer. Then I found a post recommending the use of the VLC media player, a free program, for viewing the video from 5D Mark II and 7D cameras.
After following the instructions in the aforementioned post (you have to make a change to the preferences or it won’t work), the video plays back quite well. Some of the videos I recorded before reformatting the card still drop frames, but I wonder if it’s just that those videos are more demanding and maybe it has nothing to do with the reformatting. Anyway, I just shot a couple more videos. They’re very jumpy when viewed on ZoomBrowser EX, software provided with the camera, but there doesn’t seem to be any hiccups when watching them on VLC.
More to come as the testing continues!