Newish Glass!

The past few years, whenever I would suggest a purchase, Melinda would usually respond with "when I'm dead you can spend my life insurance money", which usually brought any discussions to a halt - you can't argue with a cancer patient! She did agree to a new TV when the old CRT set died, and she eventually came around after flat out stating that the 48" screen was "too big" at the beginning. Watching our Cubs win thru the summer became our favorite pastime...

Anyway, now that she has passed, and now there IS insurance money, I've tried to be responsible and spend it on what she would approve - paid off the AZ mortgage, and still debating on the IL house... Invested most of it so retirement should be more pleasant... But I did buy a little "toy" - one she even might have approved of if we had some disposable income! We were both fans of birding at Whitewater Draw and elsewhere, and also of astronomical imaging, so when I saw a Canon "super-telephoto" lens on Craigslist, I had to check it out. Shown at left, it is a 500mm F/4 - very fast optics allowing short exposures for astronomy and pretty good reach with fast autofocus and image stabilization for birding. It is an older first generation, but was a good deal including the camouflage-cover, the Wimberley tripod head and a Canon 2X converter. Note in the photo that most of the large diameter part is the sun shade!


I got the lens in the closing days of November and have had it out a few times and it is impressive in it's performance... If you do a Whitewater Draw search on this blog, I've hoisted a few telescopes along for birding a few times and while the images for a distant crane is impressive, the very fast autofocus and image stabilization it is a whole 'nother ball game! I can now focus and follow birds in flight and have them come out tack-sharp! I've made 2 trips to their over-winter home and have gotten a few favorites already. At left are some cranes in flight at that "magic time" just before sunset. And at right is a straight shot taken with the lens of cranes at rest.



In my most recent trip this last Sunday, I
caught some distant flocks of cranes coming in from miles away where they were likely feeding on grain fields in the area. Over the same mountains shown at upper left, here at left are 127 cranes (by my count) coming in for the evening. There is "strength in numbers" as they spend the evening together at Whitewater, using the water pools as protection from predators (usually coyotes). Click on the image to enlarge to full scale to see the multitudes of cranes... And at right is the standard shot of LBT glowing in the last rays of sunset from the Observatory near 11,000 feet elevation. At 80+ miles away, it is still eye-catching as it is usually parked at an angle that reflects sunlight to us birdwatchers... This frame is actually a focus-stack of 2 frames, otherwise either the birds or observatory would have been out of focus. But here 2 shots were combined to keep the sharp part of each image.


This last trip out there was a larger variety of smaller water-birds from a month ago when there were mostly just cranes. They also cruised closer to the observation platforms, so were a natural to photograph with the 500mm! At left is a long-billed dowitcher that was difficult to freeze as it was in constant motion marching and picking thru the shallow waters... And at right is an eye-catching killdeer - a common bird, but a beauty nonetheless!






And even though we're suffering through what seems like the cloudiest Fall and Winter in recent memory, I've gotten the lens out on a couple occasions for astronomical imaging. The first time I was fighting thin clouds and wasn't a good test for its capabilities. But the next time I shot a few objects and got some promising results. At left are a couple nebulae that shine by fluorescence of hydrogen resulting in a reddish glow. Commonly called the North American nebula at left and the Pelican Nebula at right, they are analogous to the glow from a fluorescent bulb, but excited not by electricity but from a bright star out of the field. This image is a stack of 17 frames totaling about 35 minutes of total exposure. The lens is extremely sharp from corner-to-corner across the full-frame 6D sensor, and I did stop it down to F/5.6 to reduce vignetting at the corners a little. But overall the results are quite good! At right is another glowing cloud of hydrogen - this one known as the Rosette Nebula, looking almost like a ghostly Christmas wreath! This one is only 10 minutes of total exposure!

So I'm impressed with the overall performance of the lens for both birding and astronomy! It will be one of my standard tools when going out on excursions, and might be just about perfect for the upcoming solar eclipse in August! But it is a sobering reality to know that it is a product of a life insurance payout... Would much rather do without it and have the presence of my bride back... But it will give me a chance to remember her every time I have it out with me!

Fauna of the Fox River Valley

During my 5 weeks at "Ketelsen East" this Fall, I kept my eyes open for wildlife. Out in the woods around the house I often saw signs of 'possums, and skunks, but rarely saw their mostly-nocturnal outlines in the dusk. I saw "Bruce", our resident groundhog, but didn't catch him on film this time, nor the white-tail deer I would occasionally spot bedded down adjacent to the access road to the house.

Probably the stars of the trip were the nesting pair of Sandhill Cranes and their nestlings. I literally spotted them in River Bend Community Park, adjacent to the bike path, where I was able to bike to within 50 feet or so where I took the picture at left with my cell phone. I spotted them on an almost daily basis, both in the park and down the road about 150 yards where I think they stayed the summer. Not always carrying the "big" camera, after spotting them one day I had time to run home (a mile) to get the camera and get back with a telephoto. Of course, once off the bike or out of the car and they suddenly recognized me as a dangerous human and started fleeing, but was able to catch the male at right.


Of course, the image at right is reduced in size to fit the blog 1600 pixel-wide limit. While the plumage is a little drab, shown at full resolution at left, more details in his feathers can be seen and the bicolor feathers stand out nicely!

After spotting the house whose backyard they stayed in, I could find them most any time. At right is their usual stomping grounds between the house and a water lagoon. How cool would it be to have sandhill cranes living in your back yard?! I guess after the novelty wore off, it might be a pain - likely against the law to disturb them and even mowing the yard might be considered harassment... Again, if I was on foot they were quite wary, even when they were 50 yards away as shown here.


To get around their fear of humans, the cure, of course, was to drive up to them in a car! I drove down the street leading to the front of the above house, and the cranes nearly walked up to me! With the 300mm lens, it was quite easy to get the closest view I'll ever likely get of them! At right is the male again, and at right is the male in the background and one of the fledglings in the foreground. In this view you can see the youngster has lost some of the feathers off the top of its head and will likely be replaced by the characteristic red plumage that is on top of the adult heads! These pics were taken a few weeks ago when I was still there - duh! But they didn't seem in any hurry to head southwards. Hopefully the cold weather they've gotten since has motivated them to move further south!


Besides the cranes, Canada Geese were literally everywhere! There is a contingent of them that spends the winters in the Fox Valley and there were thousands lining the streets as seen at left, as well as school yards, local cornfields, really most everywhere there was space for a few hundred to congregate. They have certainly lost their novelty and the little "surprises" they leave behind don't particularly make them popular... Not particularly common, but seen several times were the odd egret and heron, though not as numerous as a half dozen years ago when they were seen most every day fishing along the banks of the river.



About the only other creature seen that I had not before was a garter snake that my friend Jane spotted while we were out walking. I've NEVER seen snakes of any kind on the grounds of the camp, so this one took me by surprise. It was also quite willing to pose for me and besides the still frame at left, I also took a stereo pair at right. Get out the red/blue glasses to see the view in 3D!





And, of course, I can't have just one anaglyph image on the blog - it just ruins the symmetry of its Tao, or something like that, so here is another, though it has nothing to do with the fauna of the area. It is of a little patio table that usually holds an ashtray for Melinda's friends to gather around outside to smoke when they visit. Well, the ashtray is still there, but unseen under the pile of leaves that fell naturally to cover table and chairs. And yes, I did my duty and swept off the sidewalk and table before leaving for Tucson, making sure the majority of the leaves were off the tree before doing so. Again, the red/blue glasses are needed to see the 3D!

It was a nice trip and I'm already looking forward to a return, though now that winter has a grip on the area, I might wait till it is closer to warmer weather. But you never know - I might get a hankerin' for some snow and cold weather!

Tides, Pelicans!

Growing up in the Midwest, and then living over half my life in Arizona, the shoreline is still an amazing place to me. The trip to Puerto Peñasco especially is interesting as the desert doesn't change much until you get about 10 miles from the shore when it suddenly goes from desolate desert to desolate desert mixed with beach sand... Oh yea - and there is the 4,000 foot tall volcano complex we pass on the way too, the Pinacates, that stand out too. But anyway, once on the shoreline, the blue of the sea contrasting with the pale sand just hurts your eyes it is so pure!

And since the place is so alien, I'm still amazed by simple things. Puerto Peñasco has some of the largest tidal swings in the world, interestingly enough... While down at the southern tip of Baja the tidal change is something less than 1 meter, like the little waves in a bath sloshing up over the end of the tub, tides can move up to 7 meters at the end of the Sea of Cortez near Rocky Point! We always seem to visit near new or full moon, so the tidal swings are generally near their maximum. The photo at left was taken 5pm Sunday, at high tide. You can see a woman climbing up the shore, crossing the high tide mark left the night before, helped with a strong southerly wind. At right is the same vantage point the next morning at 11am, low tide. This was only a 4 meter range, but with the 150 meters of beach exposed, you can see how far out it can go if that vertical range is almost doubled. One of my early time lapse clips was of the tide coming in, blog post from 4.5 years ago is here, and the Youtube video is here!

Perhaps helped by the steady winds blowing strongly during our entire stay, the brown pelicans were a constant presence drifting over. I've seen them gliding in long lines seemingly inches off the water, a risky proposition with the blustery, rough sea this time. I've also seen them fishing in large groups, soaring almost motionless, then tucking wings to dive underwater, often hoisting a large fish down their throat when they surface. But this time they were conservatively high, nowhere near the water, as they soared by the dozens, if not hundreds in small groups, perhaps headed home after hanging out by the shrimp boat docks.

On Monday afternoon, our last full day in Mexico, we headed into town for some sightseeing. For no particular reason, I took along the 300mm lens in case anything interesting came up. We went in to the Malecon, the sea wall and walkway along the bay in Rocky Point. Comfortably seated, the pelicans flew by at head height or below us, so I fetched the lens and monopod to try shooting them. Thanks to the marvels of autofocus and image stabilization, it was almost like shooting fish in a barrel to get close ups as they paraded by. Both of these pictures might be the same bird, the frame at right taken a second or two past the left image.  Like I warned you, simple stuff, but still fascinating!  I've got lots more, so stay tuned!

Whitewater Washout!

Even though we had just gone to Whitewater Draw a week ago, our friends Frank and Jenny expressed interest in going, so planned another trip on Sunday. The forecast was for 20% chance of rain, but usually in Arizona that means you might have to take shelter for a few minutes... Co-worker Steve West claims that one should pray for rain to see the snow geese come out. We hadn't seen any our previous visit, so chance of rain or not, we were going!

We left Tucson well before noon, and got to Tombstone in time for a late lunch. Turns out we had stumbled into "Vigilante Days" and the town was as crowded as I've ever seen it. Not only were there scads of old-timey saloon gals and roughnecks waving guns around, but also, a LOT of lawmen and frontier women, all in period costumes. We didn't stick around for any gun fighting, but got in, got lunch and headed on out.

As we approached McNeal, near the turnoff for Whitewater, we could see scattered rainstorms in the area, including a big one to the east. No sooner had we parked at Whitewater than sprinkles started, increasing slowly into steady rain. We walked down the dikes to the viewing area, acting as good hosts to show Jenny and Frank (first-timers) the area. There weren't a lot of birds there, perhaps a couple thousand cranes, and they were eerily silent, compared to their raucous calling in fairer weather. At left is a small group of cranes, seen against the distant outline of "Cochise's Head". Compare this picture to the one a week ago - more cranes, and much better visibility. About the only other picture I took was of a feather in the water below us - it looks to be a sandhill feather, in enough detail to see the individual barbs. Note that on the thumbnail moiré fringes might be available as the barb frequency and smaller pixel display frequency are close together. If you click the image, the fringes will disappear in the larger image. Note also the drops of rain getting the top of the feather wet. It was raining hard enough I didn't want to expose my camera and lens, as they wouldn't quite fit under my Tilly hat!  Oh, and BTW, we did see hundreds of snow geese, but they were hunkered down in the rain on the far western side of the wetlands, at least a quarter mile away, likely closer to a km...



Great Horned Owl by Frank Koch

Fortunately Frank's camera was small enough (plus umbrella to keep dry!) that when we returned to the van, he stopped at the pole shed where we'd seen a pair of great horned owls. He took the image at left and supplied it for the blog. If you click on it for the full-size image, be sure to note the talons on that thing - pretty dangerous looking!

The rain looked like it wasn't going to let up anytime soon, and with it being Jenny and Frank's first time in that area, we decided to continue down the 20 miles to Douglas. Melinda and I are big fans of the Gadsden Hotel, and wanted to show it off to them.

Douglas is a sleepy little border town of a little over 15,000, and for visitors like ourselves, the Gadsden Hotel is certainly one of the highlights! Built as a real frontier hotel in 1907, it burned to the ground and was rebuilt in 1929. Highlights include the two-story lobby with marble columns and staircase. At left is shown a 4-frame mosaic of the lobby around to the staircase. At right is a statue guarding one of the corners of the staircase.

In the background of that picture is an incredible 42 foot-long stained glass mural made by Tiffany of a desert scene.  We couldn't imagine its production and shipment across the country 100 years ago, so figured it was made by artists in residence on site.  It is always shockingly spectacular to see it backlit where it is located on the second floor.  At left is shown a 2-frame mosaic of the majority of it from across the lobby.  It was still too early to eat dinner at the dining room (opened at 5), so we loaded up the van and headed NW, avoiding the dirt roads this time and passed through Bisbee, and stopped for dinner at the Crystal Palace in Tombstone.  We were home in Tucson about 9:30, and even though we didn't get to hang out with the cranes much, it was a nice weekend day trip.  The cranes are headed north soon, so the season is over for them, but there are still plenty of things to see within a day's drive of Tucson!

A Whitewater Draw Quickie!

For years and years we've made at least a couple of trips to Whitewater Draw, a wetlands operated by Arizona Fish and Game. If you are new to the local population of cranes, feel free to peruse the search that reveals some of our recent visits. Word is getting out now, but a few years back, few knew that upwards of 30,000 sandhill cranes wintered there from Mid-October to Mid-February. With all our alternate activities over this Winter, we hadn't made it yet, and with the end of their stay approaching, we jumped at the chance for a road trip yesterday with the new Ford Van.

We left late in the day for us, about 1:30, and once we hit Benson, decided to stop and pay a short visit to friends Pat and Betty, who we've not seen or talked to much since Christmas. Our "15 minute" visit turned into a half hour, and after driving through Tombstone without even thinking about another stop, got to Whitewater Draw right at 4pm, 2 hours before sunset.

We feared that last year's drought and rumors of a broken irrigation system might have left permanent damage to the bird population, but with plenty of rain this year, the ponds and wetland's water level was about the highest I've ever seen! With a quick latrine stop, we snagged the last parking spot in the lower lot and hiked in towards the hiking trails. Fortunately, the rattling calls of the cranes greeted us like old friends, and as we approached a crowd of observers nearest a group of cranes about 75 yards away, we recognized friends Gary Rosenbaum and Frank Gacon, who we'd just seen at the astronomy club meeting the night before!  After chatting for a bit, we continued on to an overlook with a bench for relaxing.

I had a new lens to check out - a Canon 300mm F/4 gotten recently from Astromart. While not a pricey fast one for astronomy (and seemingly football games!), with a 1.4X converter, it got me into the 400+mm focal length that seems the minimum for shooting birds.  While I've got telescopes for ultra-closeups, the autofocus of a real camera lens allows shooting in dim light and on moving objects that I don't even try with a 700mm or longer telescope.  The shots above are testament that it works pretty well, though even stopped down to F/9 or so seemed to have a narrow depth of field...

Once parked at our little overlook (where most of the benches I recall had been removed!), it was nice to take the standard shots I shoot every year - at left is shown the distant mountaintop profile of "Cochise's Head" with part of the flock of cranes in the foreground.  Certainly the 300mm was a perfect focal length for that!  And at right is shown the Large Binocular Telescope atop Mount Graham, a good 80 miles (!) distant, with a flight of cranes crossing in front.  I was shocked to see the white snow atop Graham.  We had plenty of rain in Tucson last weekend, but the mountains near Tucson didn't get any snow, but it was certainly there.

While most of the cranes kept their distance, fortunately we had other diversions. Not far from the seat we found on the trail on one of the dikes, a mated pair of northern shovelers were easier to catch with tails in the air, feet furiously pumping to keep their heads under water, than their heads above water. And at right is an American Coot coming ashore right below our vantage point. While they have a distinctive look above water, their disturbingly ugly feet are only spotted on land - eww gross!

The sun continued on its path, sinking below mountains to our west.  Of course the cranes that have been out feeding wait till after sunset to return, some flying right over us, as shown at left.  At right a trio of distant cranes pass the last rays of sunlight illuminating hills to our north.  It was about this time that I met a woman from Prescott having issues with her camera.  While she said she was taking a class in using it, she knew little about it and was randomly changing modes on it trying to get decent results.  Near tears, I gave her some advice on using her equipment which seemed to improve her mood.

But even as darkness descended upon us and picture taking became more of a challenge, the action picked up! While we wandered back to our vehicle, the noise of the cranes increased in volume as the skies filled with their return. At left the silhouette of dozens of birds were captured against the deep twilight. And finally at right, the last images taken were of an American Coot with somewhere to go, leaving a wake against the twilight...

All in all it was a fun trip.  The 300mm lens worked well - it took all the above pictures, though the early ones used the 1.4X converter.  The van worked great too, was fun to drive, getting us back home in less than 2 hours, after we decided to again not stop in Tombstone.  We're still thinking of another trip before the cranes leave - we'll see!

Whitewater Draw 2014!

Yesterday saw us finally getting to Whitewater Draw for the first time this Winter.  We've been there and posted many times, and is always a fun day trip for us, about a 2 hour drive to the southeast of Tucson.  It is amazing that the high desert of the Sulfur Springs Valley can host such an amazing variety and number of birds, especially the sandhill cranes, which winter here after migrating down from northern Canada.  We announced our intentions to the astronomy club last weekend and had 7 people in 3 cars meet us there.  I understand that last year they had some issues with irrigation pumps, with some of the ponds bone dry, so it is always a bit of a surprise what you will find there.  But it looks like all is well, there was a goodly amount of water in all the ponds, though a distinct lack of plants, so not a great food source for smaller waterfowl.  We were gratified that there was a good supply of cranes though...


A couple of our group were there for the first
time, and it is always fun to see it through their eyes - I think they were impressed!  We got there about 2:30 and stayed until well after sunset, perhaps 4 hours.  There was a good initial supply of cranes, but not particularly close to the viewing stands, perhaps 75-80 meters away.  I was ready for that by packing in my William Optics 11cm F/7 refractor (770mm focal length) telescope, which zooms in on them pretty well.  The disadvantage, of course, is that it is manual focus, and with birds there just isn't time to use live view for critical focus for every frame.  But by carefully using live view and making sure the adjustable diopter lens on the viewer was set properly, I got a good percentage in decent focus - perhaps 40% or more on non-moving targets.

Because at the "near" distances involved, the telescope provides a pretty shallow depth-of-field.  One bird might be in perfect focus, but one right behind or in front might be blurry with the 700+mm focal length.  I like learning new techniques and methods, and as I posted a week ago, I learned about focus stacking to improve depth of field.  Multiple images are taken at different focus settings and the images blended in Photoshop.  As shown here at left, a single image shows some birds in sharp focus, but those behind are quite blurry.  In this case, I took 4 frames in quick succession while racking the fine focus slightly.  Blending them together in Photoshop provides the image at right with a better focus range.

Similarly in this shot of a single bird, while it is in sharp focus, I wanted the reflection in the water, the bird and the stalks behind all in focus.  Taking 3 images at various focus accomplished it.  There are some artifacts in some of the blends, especially in high-contrast areas near the crane necks in the image in the preceding paragraph.  I'll need to get more experience to see if it can be minimized, but it isn't too objectionable...

I shot a couple things besides cranes - here is buddy Bernie who came down with us on his first visit to Whitewater.  He got a new Canon 6D the other week, so was having fun with his new camera system.  When he got far enough away I could focus on him with the WO telescope, I snapped him.  At right is a long-billed dowitcher, which we saw in Mexico a couple weeks ago, and I think we've seen it at Whitewater before too.



Always up for a good challenge, catching the cranes in flight with the telescope, especially when focusing manually, seems to be a nearly impossible challenge.  But that didn't stop me from trying.  As it neared sunset, the cranes that were in the shallow water mostly departed for nearby fields for some late-afternoon feeding, providing lots of chances.  In the fading light, mostly guessing at focus, panning along their path, if you can catch the iris in their eye, you must be living right!  The only unfortunate thing is that the wing position is identical in both of these...

Sunset came and went, and the birds stayed away
- visible in hay fields a couple miles to the west - thousands and thousands of them.  Only a few hundred remained anywhere near us, at left visible silhouetted against twilight colors in a multiple-frame panorama.  We waited, knowing that they would eventually return.  Whether their delayed return was due to the warm temperatures ( at near 70F, I think it was the warmest I'd ever seen there in January!) or perhaps because of the nearly full moon, I don't know, but finally nearly a full 45 minutes after sunset, with nearly all hints of the sunset gone, their increasing rattling calls finally signaled their return.  The western sky filled with their hordes, though it was too dark to do much with the cameras.  For this last exposure I switched to the kit lens, shot at full zoom of 85mm for a tenth of a second. 

Our intrepid band of observers caravanned to Tombstone where we rejoined for dinner at the Crystal Palace, finishing our meal just as a LOUD band was starting to play.  It was a nice way to draw a great day to a close...  We'll try to get down again before they leave in another month or 6 weeks.  It is always a fun trip on a slow weekend!