Back Yard Visitor...

Despite the yard full of owl snacks (ie, our beloved kitties), both owl and cats seemed pretty low key about our backyard stalker.  We got back into town last night, quickly jumped back into our routine here.  After a quickie Valentine's dinner before Melinda headed back to work, I returned home to spot our visitor.  I've seen a few great-horned owls in town, there used to be some resident pairs living under the stadium, but I've not seen them in our neighborhood lately.  As long as they feed on the pigeons in the front yard, and leave the cats alone, I'll be happy!  Photo was taken with Canon XSi, 70-200 lens @200mm w/1.4 extender, monopod with on-camera flash.  After a few out-of-focus shots (difficult with dim sky background and flash/autofocus didn't work with extender), I got this one and he flew off a few seconds later.  Perhaps he's a little camera shy, or more likely, put off by the flash...

Lights in the Sky!

While hampered somewhat by our illnesses this week, we still keep an eye on the local weather.  Melinda is obsessed, actually - all you need to do is ask her and she knows the current temp and forecast from memory!   The week has been all grey, with white stuff or rain falling from the sky most every day, it seemed. 

Finally, last night - our last night in Illinois, the sun popped out very late in the afternoon, with the waxing crescent moon making an appearance as we drove to our dinner plans.  Later, back at home, I looked skywards - unfortunately, no chance of aurora with the very low levels of solar activity, but stars were seen for the first time this trip.  Shown at left is Orion to the right, it's upper shoulder Betelgeuse forming the Winter Triangle with Procyon at upper left, and bright Sirius below.

To escape the golden glow of the local "security light" I ambled down to the bank of the Fox River and shot the 3-frame mosaic shown here.  The river, which had been frozen over early in the week, mostly broke up and melted with the moderate warm rain we had Sunday.  It is rather scenic with the water reflections off the still water and ambient lights, though the glows from development mostly hide the starlight in the sky.   Today, there is about 20 feet of ice ringing the banks, making watching the Canada Geese interesting as they navigate their way to feeding on the lawn in front of our house.  Our next trip back there may well be chicks joining them as they feed!

Our Illinois "Flu-Cation"

As I've stated before, we book our trips to the Chicago area without regard to weather as we mostly come to visit friends, family, and spend time at "Ketelsen East", our little cabin in the woods near Saint Charles.  Regardless of time-of-year, we generally spend time outside, work on the house, visit favorite restaurants and watering holes, including at least one trip to Iowa to visit my family. 

This time we've been hobbled with the flu...  Melinda caught it in Arizona, in fact missed her last 2 days at work before we traveled here last Wednesday.  Politely, I waited about 5 days to catch it, hitting me hardest the day we were to go to Iowa for a great-niece's birthday.  So instead of infecting other family members, I got to meet a real-live Doogie Howser in an urgent-care center here.  He literally looked like he was too young to shave, but diagnosed my ills about 2 seconds after I said aaaah.  The urgent care place was quite impressive, I don't think we were in the place 25 minutes, including dispensing meds - just about the highlight of our trip here...

Anyway, while we've missed some of our normal activities here, we're both on the downhill side of our illnesses, and should be well enough to hit the ground running upon our return to Arizona.  Springtime awaits us for our next trip!

A World of White!

We're up in the Midwest this week on our every-two-month visit to Illinois to visit friends and family.  Yes, we know it is not a good time to travel to the Great White North this time of year, but neither of us are averse to cold weather, so we come up regardless of time of year.  And wouldn't you know, they are enjoying their first substantial snow of the season!  Sister Maj claims they've had snow off and on the last week or more, but with temps around freezing the snow level has ebbed and flowed as well.  Last night it came down heavily for an hour or two, adding about 3 inches to the 2 on the ground.  The pic at left was taken about sunset during a pause in the snowing action, just before we went out driving in it for dinner... It is below freezing today, so it will stick around through the weekend, but will ebb again later in the weekend with temps above freezing and moderate rain expected.

But in the meantime, we're enjoying the sight of snow while snug in our little cottage.  The panorama at left shows our view from the house of the Fox River, nearly frozen over.  Riverwood's camp canoes look a bit forlorn while covered in snow, but overall, is a nice change from the green we usually see.  It may be clear tonight, so the chance to see familiar constellations at new sky locations (due to the 10 degree difference in latitude from Tucson) will get me out in the cold to enjoy.  Meanwhile, while I was out taking the panorama at left, a flock of Canada Geese flew over, perhaps rethinking their plans about deciding to stay for the Winter.  They are headed south here, but can't imagine they'll go far - Spring is right around the corner, I hear!

Whitewater Draw, 2013!

With the sandhill crane season winding down, it looks like we'll only have 2 visits to Whitewater Draw this year.  As normal, every visit is different, depending on temperature, water level, and a variety of other things I still don't understand.  Sometimes we see an abundance of birds we never see again, but the one constant is that there are typically lots of cranes, usually tens of thousands...  This year we went on 5 Jan, and again 4 weeks later on 2 February.  The big difference for me between the 2 visits is that last weekend I lugged the big 11cm diameter, 770mm focal length refractor, getting me closer to our buddies there than ever before.  As a result, the picture quality is incomparable, and other than the last image below, all images are from the most recent visit with said lens.  I'm still amazed that even at full camera resolution you can pick out tiny details!  At left here as an example, are the same 2 cranes as headlined the last blog post.  This shot was taken not only with the 770mm, but with an additional 1.4X extender (1080mm focal length!),  which I only used to take a half dozen frames.  The additional focal length makes it harder to focus, narrows the depth of field, and amplifies the shaking and platform wobbles as people walk nearby.  But at the same time, you can see the lower crane has a bit of a hook to his beak - another view I've never seen before!  Clicking on the image will load the image's full resolution, ie, not resampled to make a smaller file - it is cropped from the "actual pixels" image from Photoshop...

 

With such a closer view, you start to observe little details, some pretty mundane, like taking a drink of water.  I've never noticed before nor realized their long neck might create difficulties.  At least this fellow here scoops a mouth full of water, then raises his head to let gravity help it run down his (her?) throat.  The still water's reflection is an added bonus...

 

While wintering here they spend their days feeding in nearby fields and return to the wetlands to avoid predators - enjoying both safety in numbers and using the shallow pools of water to ward off coyotes.  But those are not the only things on their mind - there seems to be a lot of posturing and conflict going on!   I don't understand these things and Wikipedia doesn't discuss it, but there seems to be battles for some sort of domination going on.  You can often see these very short battles going on with their considerable wingspan extended, beaks poised as deadly weapons.  Of course, for a 2 second battle, the telescope is rarely pointed in the right direction, but I did catch this sequence right about sunset.  Occasionally you see them hop/fly up and also wield their feet as weapons too.  Several were spotted with a beak full of feathers, so they do play seriously!

 

By this third shot at left, the bird to the left has turned, and you can see his previous battle scars - some missing feather from his left wing (seen also in first pic above).  A second or two later the conflict is resolved and the combatants dissolve into the crowd.  Since I can't tell boys from girls, I don't know if it is a male thing or not.  Most of the cranes seem totally uninterested in these sorts of things, like the fellow at right, standing on one leg, beak tucked under wing for a standing nap...

 

The telescope was great for catching them in flight as well.  My technique on calibrating the focus and adjusting the camera diopter setting to match my eye seemed to work well, as many of the shots where I caught them in flight seemed pretty well-focused.  The image at right is a favorite - also shown at full camera resolution, the view of them flying is almost from right over their shoulder, showing them, muddy feet and all!  Of course, as it got darker, longer exposures were needed - I even tried some shots for an artistic effect.  Longer exposures as they flapped their wings added an interesting feel to the images, at right a tenth of a second exposure.

 

 

There was a single non-avian observation - one of the Large Binocular Telescope, seemingly watching over us from atop Mount graham 80 miles to the north.  They park it in the same location every day, which catches the rays of the setting sun for observers down at Whitewater.  It is very apparent as a brilliant orange-yellow spot as the sun sets from our location.  The picture shows how the LBT building dominates the profile of Graham with it's boxlike structure.  The brightest part of the reflection is actually from the glass-lined observing room and dining area with a direct solar reflection at the bottom of the structure.  Clicking the image to load the larger view, to the left of LBT you can also see the Vatican Observatory just above the tree line.  There is a third major structure in the Sub-Millimeter Telescope, which I do not spot in this image.  This single image is a bit underexposed so as to not blow out the details in the LBT structure...

 

 

Oh - and there were birds other than cranes there!  Several of their lagoons, normally flooded were dry this year.  Someone mentioned they were trying to control weed overgrowth in them, but as a result, many of the waterfowl normally found there were absent.  We didn't spot the grebes, buffelheads and many duck varieties we'd seen in recent years.  And the yellow-headed blackbirds that were so numerous a year or two ago were almost totally missing this year.  American coots are also normally abundant, but only a couple were spotted.  But there were a good supply of green-winged teals - the male shown here shows a nice pattern of op-art B&W feathers along with his characteristic head banding.  This bird got pretty close, yet I was able to focus on him at the 20 yard distance or so.  It is hard not to demonstrate the fine detail in the image with the full-rez crop at right.  Note the double-sun reflection in his eye - one directly from the sky, one reflected off the water...  Again, it is the same image, just a crop at full resolution...

 

While the numbers were down somewhat from previous years, there were still some northern shovelers feeding in front of us as well.  with the sun behind me, the iridescence of the head and wing feather was quite good.  Another new bird for me was the long billed dowitcher.  They were quite interesting when a group of them were feeding in shallow water, bills extended downwards, heads moving up and down like little sewing machines.  I also liked this one for the reflection in the water - couldn't make myself crop it out!

 

Finally among the last pictures taken last weekend were the silhouette of cranes against the sunset-tinted water.  Again, this and all the above pictures were taken with the 770mm focal length William Optics 11cm, F/7 apochromatic refractor.  We have yet to get through Melinda's pictures - she is recovering from a brief bout with the flu, so may well yet post some of her shots.  I'm going to close with the one shot from our early January trip to Whitewater.  The wetlands is a long way from anywhere, and while we've always thought about doing some night time observing there, our wintertime visits are invariably frigid and after being out for a few hours watching birds, staying later always seems like a bad idea.  But in January, I wanted to take a self-portrait of myself against the twin spires of the Milky Way and Zodiacal light.  I found a berm not far from the car and after everything was packed up from birding, set up the tripod and 16mm fisheye lens for the 45 second exposure.  The horizon glows are from Tucson at far right, Tombstone and Sierra Vista left of center.  As for the sky glows, the Milky Way galaxy extends upwards on the right half of the exposure, and the diffuse glow of the Zodiacal Light at left.  The latter is rarely seen, but is sunlight reflected off dust and meteoritic particles in the plane of the solar system.  As an added benefit, the planet Mars is centered in the Zodiacal Light where it meets the horizon.  Seems a suitable bookend shot for this year's visits to one of our Winter stomping grounds...

 

Whitewater Draw - First Look!

We spent a great day at Whitewater Draw Saturday watching the Sandhill Cranes.  And while today was a lazy day early on, now I find myself with only a brief time to post, so at least I've downloaded my 400+ images, and scanned the nearly twice as many Melinda took.  Likely I'll delete at least half of mine, at least the out-of-focus and boring ones.

This time I swore I wouldn't be under-powered and have little bird images!  I humped the William Optics 11cm APO the quarter mile or so to the viewing stand, along with the tripod and camera gear - a pretty good load.  And ironically, the cranes were the closest I've ever seen - the nearest brave ones were only 50 yards or so away!  It made for some great shots with the 770mm focal length of the WO scope, but also some unique problems - for one, if a couple birds were only a foot or two apart along the line to me, one of them would be slightly out of focus.  You can see at left that I focused at the lower bird, which was right next to the other, which is slightly fuzzy with the slight distance between them...

 

With the manual focus of the telescope, it took some practice to get exact focus.  Melinda got me an accessory hood focuser for my birthday which has helped a lot, and I fine-tuned the diopter adjust on the camera so it would be in good critical focus when focused to my eye.  Another challenge was to catch them in flight, being both able to pan along and get to focus at the same time!  But I was able to do it as these shots show.  The shot at right is a full rez enlargement of one frame - hey, if you can see the pupil of the bird's eye from a couple hundred yards, I'm happy!

 

As shown on this shot, as well as the uppermost picture above, you can actually see through their nostril holes on their beak - I've never been close enough to see that before!  Likely not due to the scope or the near distance, but the combination is killer!  Oh, and by the way - the big 4+ inch scope made me a big hit with the ladies, if you know what I mean!  I had a good number of them introducing themselves and wanting to see what it was capable of doing...

 

The scope is the only optics I shot through, so I left it to Melinda to catch some of the wider fields, including this one of hers showing the sunset colors full of bird silhouettes, as well as a few in the water.  While there were always a good number of them near us, the huge crush of them returned just as dark arrived, almost impossible to capture photographically, but their nearly deafening calls as they arrived in near darkness is impossible to forget!  I'm hoping to make some more time the next day or two to include other sights we saw Saturday...

 

 

The BIG Glasses!

A few weeks ago I posted that most amateur astronomers own more than one telescope.  Some are better at some things than others, some are easier to carry outside and set up, some do better under a dark perfect sky.  I love binoculars - using both eyes with which to observe is more relaxing, and you seem to see more than squinting with a single eye.  So I've also got more than one pair of binoculars too.  Interestingly, most all of them were acquired from my friend Dick!  He has a local reputation of buying optical doodads, evaluating and using them for a few weeks or months, then reselling them, usually at a fraction of their original cost.  A couple pair he has given me for various reasons, a few were sold at bargain prices.  I think this pair he actually made a few dollars!

What you are looking at is a WWII war prize!  The story that I remember him telling me is that when we occupied Japan after the end of the War, a sailor asked his commanding officer if he could take these home.  They have been stored in a wooden box, complete with some tools until Dick acquired them from the sailor himself.  By that time (in 1990), the sailor was getting up in age, had a hard time toting them around, and was looking to pass them along.  Dick gladly paid him a fair price, used them a month or so, then sold them to me at a 33% markup, as I recall.  He loved them as well, but the only reason that he let these go was that a year or so before, he obtained an identical pair from a used equipment dealer out of San Diego (in much poorer condition), had them cleaned, had optical coatings applied, and as an optical designer, designed and had built new custom eyepieces.  I believe there is an article he wrote about the experience in the ole' Telescope Making Magazine in the '90s.  I can look up the article or even provide copies if anyone is interested...

Anyway, I loved them, made the wooden Dobsonian mount so that they would interface with the sturdy tripod shown, which I obtained from a different source earlier.  The binoculars are 20X120, twenty power, with lenses just under 5" in diameter.  They were made by Nikko, which became Nikon after the War.  Interestingly, the virtual twins of these Dick has were made by Tokyo Optical - obviously a design made by several contractors.  My understanding is that Japan lagged in radar development during the War, but they had these excellent binoculars, as well as others up to 8" in diameter that worked well under low light levels, so Japan fought to a near draw with the allies during the early parts of the War.  Unfortunately, Dick kept the original wooden box, tools and sights for use with his rebuilt binoculars.  The sights shown here are brass replicas a machinist friend made.

 

While optical coatings were in their infancy during WWII, these are uncoated, so throughput is likely only 50% or so, but the optics are EXCELLENT!  They've never been apart - the wax seals are undisturbed and they are incredibly sharp.  One view that comes to mind is when I set up on Kitt Peak, and looked at an Indian village about 6 miles away.  I spotted a couple kids shooting baskets on a basketball court, and you could easily see the color of their shirts.  At the Grand Canyon Star Party it is fun to spot hikers on trails and see visitors at the north rim lodge 10 miles away!  At night, even with the uncoated optics, a multitude of galaxies and clusters can be spotted, and I've had lots of breathtaking views of the sun (properly filtered) and moon rising/setting behind distant mountains.  The 45 degree deviation of the eyepieces make observing at high elevations very comfortable.  Shown in these 2 pictures are the wax seals, the internal baffles to block stray light, and the extendable sun shades that work quite well.

 

It is difficult to demonstrate how well they work without having you over to look through them, but enclosed here is a shot I took about a week ago of the filtered sun (I got solar filters early on for them - great for solar eclipses!) with the digital SLR.  There are better ways to photograph the sun, but you get a feel for it.  Sunspots, even solar granulation is easily visible by eye, not so much in this image.  North is at about the 2 o'clock position in this image.

In short, I love them, but at 40 pounds they are difficult to move around and set up.  I kid folks that the neck strap is a killer!  And the tripod, necessarily rock solid, weighs another 50 pounds or more too.  But the views are generally very worthwhile.  I think I'll lug them to the Canyon again this June - selfish of me to keep the view to myself!