Mokka mit Schlag » Birding

After some more experimentation with my Tamron 28-300 Di VC, I think I finally understand what this lens is and what to do with it. It is a closeup lens, not a telephoto lens. That is, it takes really good pictures fairly close (within a few meters) and pretty crappy ones far away. For example look at this nice close-up of a juvenile American coot taken at 300mm:

Santee Lakes, San Diego County, 2009-08-23
1/800 s, f/6.3, ISO 400, handheld

It’s pretty good, especially around the body where you can easily make out the individual feathers. In fact, if anything, it’s over-sharp; though that’s probably just a combination of me over-sharpening it in Lightroom and the JPEG conversion. The original full-size photo is even better than this.

Now compare to this shot of a far-away coot taken with the same lens. You’d expect the subject to be smaller, but it’ worse than that: very, very fuzzy and unsharp, even with a much faster shutter speed:
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Now that I’ve moved back to Brooklyn that pretty much closes out my BGBY effort for Orange County at 161, well short of the 200 species I was shooting for. 200 was a stretch but if I had had the extra 4 months, I could easily have added another 10-20 species. At least I managed to improve last year’s total by 2.

The silver lining is that now I get to start a new list for Brooklyn. (I suppose if I had bicycled across the country I could combine the two lists, but, as much fun as that sounds, I don’t have that sort of time or strength.) I’ve made a few excursions to Prospect Park (including 2 back in March) and I’m now starting the year with a very respectable 75 species:
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Not countable and thus not life bird #474 but I did want to see one before I left Southern California, and after asking a few local experts on OrangeCountyBirding, it turned out there was a population only about 10 miles away in the Santa Ana “River”, so I drove over to Huntington Beach this morning before work, walked up the levee, and in less than half a kilometer heard its metallic song. It took a few minutes to actually see it, but when I did it was unmistakeable:

As this photo proves, I still need a good, longer bird lens with a tele-extender. Now where are the Pin-tailed Whydahs?

Black Phoebe (Sayornis nigricans)
William R. Mason Regional Park, 2009-07-26
Canon EOS 50D, Tamron 28-300mm DI VC Zoom, f/8.0, 1/500s, 300mm

San Diego County, California, February 28, 2009

Do you recognize this bird?
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Finally got my scope repaired after the Birdathon damage back in April (though it was worth it) so I woke up early and spent an hour at Robert Badham watching the sea before work. The good news is that the scope now works again. I’ve missed it sorely over the last couple of months, especially on the monthly Sea & Sage walks at San Joaquin, where we’ve had to make do with a single scope shared among 20+ people. The bad news is that this was not the best morning for a sea watch. The winds weren’t good, and no pelagic species were evident. However I did pull in 15 near-shore species including a Juvenile Wandering Tattler:
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