April 22 2018 Hendrie Valley, RBG, Burlington, ON. Almost all photographs accompanying previous posts are my own work; not absolutely all though because on a handful of occasions I have had to seek help. My trusty camera, a Nikon P510, is now six or seven years old and generally still going strong although it seems to be gobbling up battery power again, so yesterday I indulged myself with a new one; it was, I’ll admit a bit of an impulse purchase. Specifications don’t matter all that much, this new little Nikon B700 is the lineal descendent of my ‘old’ trusty and I’m sure will serve me well.
I set out early to complete a transect survey cognizant that I had a new camera on my shoulder and hoping to put it through its paces. About fifteen minutes along I noticed the head of a Great Egret poking above the top line of a retaining wall. I stopped. It had promise of a nice shot if the bird would stay for a while, there were lots of nice elements about it: a bright white, statuesque bird against a dark background and back-lit. My new camera behaved well, exceeding my expectations, for a handful of portrait shots,
….and then when the egret eventually flew I tried for an in-flight shot hoping the camera would find focus quickly; it obliged with this for Bird of the Day.
The rest of the transect exercise was modestly rewarding with pairs of Northern Shovelers, Gadwall and Pied–billed Grebes on one of the ponds. Dark–eyed Juncos and American Tree Sparrows are in short supply, they breed much farther north of us and I think we may have seen the last of them until mid-October.
While the Great Egret was the morning’s wow! factor, I was entertained for a long while by a pair of Black–capped Chickadees who were excavating a nest hole in a river-side stump. They were industriously taking turns entering the cavity then moments later merging with a beak-full of dry wood pulp. I put my new camera to work trying to capture the birds’ efforts, I should have selected a faster shutter speed because the exiting birds were too fast for ‘Auto’ setting and I usually only captured a blur. Still here they are, not eye-catchingly flashy like the egret but charming and every bit Birds of the Day too.
