The Quiet Picture

Random rants and occasional photographs

Archive for October, 2007

Nuthatches

October 28th, 2007 | Category: bird

I finally got some pictures of nuthatches! Not very good, granted, but it is a dark day so I had to dial up to ISO 800 and I still only got shutter speeds of 1/160 at best. Maybe next weekend then.

There were two individuals, but it was impossible to get them in the same frame. So the above picture is a composite, two OOF frames with motion blur with the stump as an anchor to tie them together. Either that, or delete…
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Birds

October 21st, 2007 | Category: bird
I know I’ve said this before, but I just love the bird feeder setup I have in front of the living room window. I sat down with the camera when the first birds arrived in the morning, and two and a half hours later I had 163 images. That has never, ever happened before! So, after sorting out the images, I finished with 12. Not much of a keeper ratio for sure… I’m fairly certain though that even the best of the bird photographers don’t get a keeper with every click of the shutter. Having said that, I had to crop each of the 12 images for composition, and not all of them are pin sharp. For example the willow tit taking off below - I should be so lucky!

Blue tits are my favourite birds so I really, really wanted to get a keeper of one. It’s a bit heartbreaking to see that as close as I am to the birds, the 300mm (480mm) renders them very small in the frame. I’m a close-up photographer by nature so dealing with small subjects in a big frame is a problem for me. If there’s enough light next weekend, I’ll add the 1.4 TC in the equation. Every little helps.

My favourite blue tit image so far. Cropped from left and below.

As for the other visitors to the feeder, the crested tit made another fly-by. I have to do some reading about them, how can I coax them to stay at the feeder? The woodpecker also showed up and this time I got a keeper. Later in the afternoon the squirrel finally made its entrance, but unfortunately my house gets in the way of light in the afternoons so I settled with watching the squirrel in action, which was a lot of fun as well!
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Visitors

October 14th, 2007 | Category: bird, squirrel
Now that winter is approaching, I have filled up my bird feeders to help out the little ones. There is already a lot of traffic and I have a first row seat from my living room window. Yesterday I was very happy to see the first crested tit to come for a visit, I have only ever seen a crested tit once before and it was many years ago. Unfortunately, no more crested tits today but many others - mostly great tits, followed by willow, coal and blue tits.

Willow tit (Parus montanus). Image is cropped - these birds are so small that 300mm is not enough even at close proximity. And anyway, I compose dead in the middle, otherwise I don’t stand a chance of keeping up with the birds - they are too fast for me!

Some nuthatches also dropped in briefly and the jays were terrorising the neighbourhood as usual. They are really skittish though, so all I need is to show myself in the window to get rid of the big bullies. Also the woodpecker that single-handledly (single-beakedly?) ate a whole container of peanuts last spring wanted to have its share. But the woodpecker is almost as shy as the jay, so it didn’t stick around for portraits.

One visitor that I was hoping for though was the red squirrel. Last year I built a perch specifically for the squirrels, but the winter was so lousy that I never made an effort to set up food and wait for the furry critters. I decided to give it a try today, so I put some sunflower seeds in the crevices on top of the stub, hoping that the squirrel would stay on the perch instead of running up a tree with the loot. And it did! At first when I noticed that the squirrel had taken my bait, I took a few pictures through the window just to see how the composition worked out. I was amazed to find out that my perch setup is so close to my window that if the squirrel keeps its tail down, I can only fit the whole animal in the frame if I use a vertical composition!

But, shooting through the window produces fuzzy pictures, so I carefully opened the window and the squirrel stayed put, even if it seemed to figure out that something was going on. Then I was really clumsy when I changed from horizontal to vertical composition, and the squirrel disappeared when it heard the thud. But the good news is that if I just would manage to keep things quiet, I could get some really nice squirrel pictures. Just add snow!

Image is cropped a little bit from bottom and right, but the tail didn’t fit the horizontal frame anyway.
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Like winter

October 13th, 2007 | Category: creek, snow
The temperatures have been cold enough to keep the snow we got on Thursday. Today is the coldest day yet, had 6 below in the morning and it has only crept up above freezing now in the afternoon. So on with all the winter clothes, and out to play in the (little) snow… and yes, I did enjoy it!

Österhocklan
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First snow

October 11th, 2007 | Category: snow, weather
Not counting the few snowflakes we got in September, today we got our first snow. Looks like most of the snow fell before the weather front got to us, but there’s enough to cover the ground with the white stuff so this absolutely qualifies. It will disappear soon but that’s to be expected at this time of the year and I’m not too disappointed about it. Yet.
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Colour

October 06th, 2007 | Category: autumn
Sunshine, blue skies and autumn colours. Not sure if my day’s shoot has ever looked as colourful as today!

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Weather - September 2007

October 01st, 2007 | Category: weather
September was odd in that it was … well, very September-ish. Lately it seems like the months have been unlike themselves but now we got the kind of temperatures you’d expect, maybe not as much as rain as would be normal but some anyway, and most of all, we got glorious autumn colours. I wasn’t here in September last year, but I heard people saying that the colour season was exceptionally short and dull.

We also saw the first snowfall of the season, it wasn’t much but it qualifies. The coldest temperature I saw was -3°C on the morning of the 19th.

I just found an SMHI publication (PDF) about Hälsingland’s climate, it provides some weather extremes for this county.

* * *

Temperature (High): 14°C
Temperature (Low): 3°C
Temperature (Average): 8°C

Barometer (High): 1025 mbar
Barometer (Low): 988 mbar
Barometer (Avg): 1005 mbar

Total of sunny days: 3

Snow: just a little, nothing to count

Rain: 85 mm
Days with rain: 16

* * *

January 2007
February 2007
March 2007
April 2007
May 2007
June 2007
July 2007
August 2007
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