Spoonbill surprise...

Yesterday morning I found the resident Brown Falcon at one of my favorite spots and got some nice images of it, as well as saw my first ever Plumed Whistling Ducks. It was foggy, as it was today, and it was the case of getting as close as possible to avoid the white, washed out look.

Brown Falcon (Falco berigora). 30D, 300mm f/4L IS USM, stacked 2x and 1.4x, ISO1600, f/16, 1/320th, hand held, cropped from horizontal into full frame vertical image. Noise reduction to sky.

I was actually heading home when I noted a brownish head peering above tall grasses some 100m from me as I drove along. Having pondered what it may have been and that it looked a little odd, I quickly turned around and checked it with my binoculars. There were at least six if not more of these Plumed Whistling Ducks around the edge of that particular pond. I was so elated as it was a first for me. Being very far I had to use stacked converters on my 300mm f/4L IS USM lens and while normally the image quality is quite good when the subject is close, when they are far, the only shots it's good for is for ID.

As I drove along Andrews Road near the Penrith Baseball fields on my way to feed my horse I noticed a bird of prey on the side of the road, perched on the most unattractive sign. I thought it was a Little Falcon (Falco longipennis) at first, but when I turned around and stopped, it turned out to be a Brown Goshawk (Accipiter fasciatus). Rarely have I seen a perched Brownie let alone in the open. I was already amazed that at 30m away it sat still. I approached a bit closer and used the stacked converters again and really struggled to get any shutter speed. The dark areas are a little noisy in the RAW file, but I managed to easily clean the sky, leaving a little digital grain in the dark plumage. Still, a gorgeous raptor and I look forward to photographing the nesting pair in my friend's front yard in a couple of months' time.

Brown Goshawk (Accipiter fasciatus) on the lookout. 30D, 300mm f/4L IS USM, stacked 2x and 1.4x, ISO1600, f/16, 1/320th, hand held, 70% of full frame taken at sunrise.




This morning, I checked one of my regularly visited ponds to find a pair of Yellow-billed Spoonbills (Platalea flavipes) preening on the edge. The fog was worse than yesterday, yet the ambiance was beautiful and I actually enjoyed the scenery. I was able to approach carefully to within 15m of both birds as there were tall tussocks and other vegetation that were partly obscuring them. Lucky me. Most of the time any species of spoonbill are really hard to work with as their comfort zone is usually at least 50m. I was kneeling on the wet grass as they began to feed. One walked further away but first gave me ample opportunities to watch it move its bill rapidly from side to side as it probed for morsels. A few times it seemed to have grabbed something only to come up empty handed. After a couple of minutes the bird flew. Its partner hung around and behaved perfectly normally. At this stage I was still using my 300mm f/4L IS USM combo with a 1.4x converter, giving me a field of view of 672mm due to my camera having an APS-C sensor.











Yellow-billed Spoonbill (Platalea flavipes) feeding. 30D, 300mm f/4L IS USM, 1.4x, ISO640, f/5.6, 1/2000th, hand held, full frame image.




In any case, I kept working with the bird and once I had enough images with the 1.4x converter, I slapped the 2x on for a while. It's still a good combo in good light, but I only have manual focus. I got quite a few shots with this set-up when my adventurous side told me to stack the 1.4x onto it, giving me an effective focal length of 840mm or around 1344mm on the APS-C sensor crop body. Not an easy job to get sharp images while hand holding. I had to push ISO to 1600 to get some shutter speed, any speed for that length of lens and I was rather happy with the results. Nothing a little noise reduction in post process could not deal with. I was overexposing on average by at least one stop and reduced exposure during RAW file conversion. About ten minutes later a White-necked Heron dropped in as well. It pays to stay low and pretty slow and quiet. It's amazing how many times the birds will come close!

Yellow-billed Spoonbill (Platalea flavipes) feeding. 30D, 300mm f/4L IS USM, stacked 2x and 1.4x, ISO1600, f/16, 1/320th, hand held, full frame image.

Don't forget to click the images so you get to enjoy the larger sized view. :)

























Yellow-billed Spoonbill (Platalea flavipes) portrait. 30D, 300mm f/4L IS USM, stacked 2x and 1.4x, ISO1600, f/16, 1/500th, hand held, full frame image.



















Yellow-billed Spoonbill (Platalea flavipes) and White-necked Heron (Ardea pacifica). 30D, 300mm f/4L IS USM, 1.4x, ISO500, f/5.6, 1/1600th, hand held, full frame image, +1 stop compensation.