Mudflats and Golden-Wing Warblers
Today was a change of pace, after the slow day yesterday at Magee Marsh. Howard Marsh is a much different environment, and the change did me good. ...
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Howard Marsh photo workshop
First stop is Howard Marsh for the Biggest Week In American Birding (BWIAB) Photo Workshop with Kevin Loughlin of Wildside Nature Tours. Howard Marsh has lots of low, open mudflats, popular with wading birds ... and they're all just standing there, or slowly walking around, poking in the mud. It's so easy compared to the tiny, twitchy warblers I've been shooing for the last month. But, that's the point of the workshop - "Light, Shadow, Background" Get down low, move around, try to get a shot with a good background. It's much easier to practice framing and background when it's a group of Caspian terns just standing there, posing for the camera. (Also saw lots of black-necked stilts, short-billed dowitcher and dunlins.) We went walking along the trail looking for a Yellow-Headed Blackbird that was reported in the area, but couldn't find it. We were told "come here at 7PM, they'll be right next to the parking lot." (Foreshadowing).
Speaking of foreshadowing - about the LOT of pictures I mentioned yesterday ...
The advantage to slow-moving birds is I have time to move around, try different angles and framing, and get exactly the picture I want. The downside is - I've been shooting warblers. My camera is set to 30 frames per second, with a half-second of pre-capture turned on, so I can (hopefully) get good shots of hyperactive warblers as they flit around. But, when the birds are just sitting there, and I'm trying all sorts of different shots, the frames add up. I rolled over from memory card #1 on my camera, and into memory card #2 ... and they're 1.6TB memory cards(!). Thank goodness I have an efficient culling workflow with Photo Mechanic - but even then, it takes a couple of hours to cull the tens of thousands of frames down to the few hundred potential keepers, and then to the few dozen that are worth trying to edit.
The photo workshop was great - chatting with my fellow bird photographers, remembering to sit down to get as low as I can to clean up the background - I had a fun time. There were a husband and wife from New Jersey singing the praises of a Galapagos tour with Kevin. Someday maybe.
Maumee Bay boardwalk
After the morning workshop, I needed lunch and to attend my next session at BWIAB in the afternoon. But, I had a little time left, so instead of going to lunch, I followed the BlueSky BWIAB hotline account and went to look for a Golden-Wing Warbler on the Maumee Bay boardwalk, on the grounds of the Lodge where the festival conferences were held. I didn't find the Golden-Wing (again), but I saw a bunch of Palm and Yellow-Rumped Warblers, and got a shot of a pair of nesting Red-Headed Woodpeckers. I also tried to hunt down a Tennessee Warbler that was calling in the bushes right next to the parking lot. I paired up with another bird photographer who was also trying to find it - it sounded like it was right on top of us, and we found it flitting around next to a stream - but it spent most of its time hiding in the bushes. I finally got a shot, but it wasn't a great one - too far, too many shadows.
BWIAB conference
I spent too much time at the Boardwalk - should have given up on the Tennessee Warbler sooner - so I rushed into the Maumee Bay Lodge looking for a quick lunch and some caffeine after yesterday. The lodge restaurant wasn't moving fast enough to seat me, so I went to the gift shop for a bag of trail mix and a Coke Zero to tide me over until after the session.
Today's session was Kenda Lentz on photo editing, "From Perch to Perfect - Demystifying Photo Editing." Dr. Lentz had great ideas for enhancing compositions, especially by doing both global adjustments (exposure, contrast, white balance, noise reduction, cropping, etc.) and local adjustments. The big one for me was her background separation hints: use a background mask, then make the shadows colder for warm subject and vice versa, and then add a little negative dehaze to blur the background just a bit. (I need to go through her presentation slides again - she had a lot of good information.)
I won an Owl keychain when she had a "who took the most frames today" contest - the second biggest was 4K frames - my second memory card (the one I rolled over onto) had (if I remember correctly) over 12K frames on it. (!)
Pearson Metropark
After an early dinner (BW3 - chicken wings seemed appropriate on this trip), I checked the BSBO hotline on Bluesky again, and saw there were multiple sightings of a Golden-Winged Warbler and Canada Warbler at Pearson Metropark - five minutes away from my hotel.
When I got there I found quite a crowd on the trail, staring into the leaves and bushes. I caught a flash of the Golden-Wing, but couldn't get my camera to focus through the thick brush. It came out for a great view for most of the crowd - they were all excitedly taking pictures - "It's showing off!" - but I couldn't see it thanks to a branch full of leaves, and it quickly went back into hiding.
Eventually that crowd moved on chasing the Canada Warbler, and a few of us kept going on the trail, following the direction the Golden-Wing seemed to be going. Finally, FINALLY, it came out into an open area, and I got my picture of the Golden-Winged Warbler. Hooray! (I never did see the Canada warbler.) I took a few shots on the way back to the parking lot, then called it a night due to threatening rain. (It never did rain).
On my way to the parking lot I bumped into a young birding couple that saw the Golden-Wing with me, sitting on the ground excitedly pointing into the bushes. "We saw a Snipe! It was sitting right there, and it just flew back into the bushes." Then they made the obligatory comment about being on a snipe hunt - they beat me to it. 🙂
Warblers (Not Magee Marsh today...)
- Black-Throated Green
- Common Yellowthroat
- Golden-Winged (!)
- Palm
- Yellow
- Tennessee
- Yellow-Rumped
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