Jeepers Creepers, a Brown Creeper

This is a short post today about a tiny little bird that we encountered yesterday.  It is only the second time that I had ever seen a Brown Creeper.  They are hard to see and not very numerous.  In both of my sightings, it was pure accident that I even saw them.

They remind me of a nuthatch, but the nuthatches that I have seen are always upside down, climbing downward on tree trunks.  The Brown Creeper is just the opposite.  It continuously is climbing upwards, getting it’s little bill into the crevices of the tree trunks.  It keeps climbing, then when it get very high, it flies back down and starts all over.

Brown Creeper

Now to tell you how I got the photo.  When we spotted the bird, he was moving quite rapidly upward.  I scrambled to move the car off to the right so I would have an angle for my camera and 100-400mm zoom lens.  By the time I got my camera aimed out the window he was about 25 feet over my head and still going.  He was finally under a horizontal tree branch.  I focused the best that I could, feeling like I was standing on my head to do it.  I feel very lucky that I got the bird this much in focus.  I did have to use a little of that Focus Magic to get it to look this good.

Original image of Brown Creeper

Above is the original image.  As you can see, I used a little bit of  ‘artistic license’ and rotated the image to what you see in the top photo.  During editing I had trouble trying to look sideways at it.  I think the photo still looks natural enough to pass ‘inspection’.  Click on either image to see enlargements.

Brown Creeper – revisited

In the birding community, if a person sees a rare bird, it is customary to get a picture of it to prove the authenticity of the sighting.  When we saw the Brown Creeper that I mentiond in my previous post, I got out of the car to try and get some shots of it.  It was scrambling around, moving fast through the trees.  I tried to get it in my sights and when I was able to, I fired off what shots I could get.  Some went wild, and my shots went off in the air, so to speak.  A few made “contact”.  That was why I said that none of my images were publishable.

However, yesterday, I pulled up one of the images to see if I could salvage something.  This one below looked promising, so I opened it in Photoshop.  I kicked it, stomped it and cropped it.  I used FocusMagic on it then ended up over-sharpening it a bit, but in the end it was a pretty identifiable photo of the bird.

Brown Creeper - pre-edit

Brown Creeper

Also, after screening my other images from that day, I liked this photo of a female Ring-necked Duck, (Aythya collaris).  One of the oddities of this specie is that you will be hard pressed to make out the ring around the neck.  But both the male and female have white rings on the bill.  Go figure.

Ring-necked Duck - female

Both photographs were taken with my Canon EOS 7D and Canon 100-400mm zoom lens.  Spot metering with aperture priority.  Hand-held.

Brown Creeper:  1/500 sec. @ f11,  ISO 400.

Ring-necked Duck:  1/500 sec. @ f11, -0.3EV,  ISO 500.

The Great Blue Heron – plus……Lifer 241

We took a run out to Middle Concho Park today.  One of the highlights was catching a photo op of the Great Blue Heron, (Ardea herodias).  The Great Blue is I believe my favorite of all of the herons to photograph.  This one flew up from the river and lit high in the top of a tree on the other side.  I love the way the light breeze was blowing his plumage.  He was about 125 yards away.

I was in the car, but I was facing the wrong way to get a shot from the drivers side.  I got out and hand-held my Canon 70D with 500mm lens and 1.4 tele-converter, resting against the hood of the car.  Exposure was 1/1250 sec. @ f8 with a ISO of 125.  Center-weighted metering and aperture priority.  Click on the image to see a beautiful enlargement.

Great Blue Heron

As I said above, that was one of the highlights.  There were others and one was the spotting of not one, but two Brown Creepers, (Certhia americana).  The Brown Creeper is another rarity for the San Angelo area, so I was very pleased to see these two.  And, by the way, since I had never saw one before this was lifer number 241 for me, if anyone is keeping count.  I did get photos for confirmation, but they are not publishable quality by my standards.  They are good enough for identification purposes.

It was a good birding day.  In all we saw these 35 species:

1. American Coots   35+
2. Northern Shoveler   50+
3. Gadwall   12
4. Northern Mockingbird   4
5. House Finch   12
6. Great Blue Heron   9
7. Pied-billed Grebe   6
8. Cinnamon Teal   11
9. Great-tailed Grackle   4
10. Belted Kingfisher   2
11. Ladder-backed Woodpecker   2
12. Common Grackles   6
13. Red-winged Blackbird   2
14. Golden-fronted Woodpecker   6
15. Great Egret   2
16. Green-winged Teal   8
17. Brown Creeper   2  (lifer)
18. Meadowlark   6
19. Yellow-rumped Warbler   2
20. Eastern Bluebird   2
21. Cooper’s Hawk   1
22. European Starlings   8
23. Black-crested Titmouse   3
24. Dark-eyed Juncos – slate   12
25. Mallard   2
26. Northern Cardinal   2
27. Blue Jay   1
28. Savannah Sparrow   1
29. American Robins   2
30. Forster’s Terns   2
31. Ring-billed Gulls   50+
32. Northern Pintail   2
33. Hooded Merganzer   1
34. Ring-necked Ducks   50+
35. White-winged Dove   1