I've been birding this patch for just over 13 years so a new bird is always a bit of a red letter day. Last year the three new ones were mostly expected; Green-winged Teal had been seen on the uber patch anyway, Little Egret was overdue, and with two Great White Egrets just down the road I could reasonably hope one might stray my way. But today was completely unexpected, and it is what makes birding, and all wildlife watching, so absorbing and, at times, thrilling.
A lazy morning, I wandered downstairs, after cup of tea and Wordle and Quordle doing, just as the light was seriously deteriorating. A bird under the feeders, looked fluffy, my first thought was "Oh no, the Trichomonosis is back again." I grabbed the bins, and then got rather excited, Yellowhammer!
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| Yellowhammer, 2cy, a male I think. |
These were taken with one of the Olympus EM-5 Mk11 at ISO 1000 and f 5.6 or 6.5, the shutter speed was down to 1/40 at best, some of these are 1/30, all hand held. Yes, I have sharpened etc with software (Photoscape X, it's free) and doodled a bit, but all the same, with the lens at between 400 and mostly 600mm, it shows the effectiveness of the Olympus stabilisation system, the advantage of sticking to Olympus lenses with Olympus cameras.
I've been working on improving my studio photography of beetles etc. Following a few suggestions online I tried making a greaseproof paper cylinder to put around the specimen and then lighting with the LED flexi lights that came with my microscope. It worked pretty well I think. This despite my cable release seemingly malfunctioning; something's wrong anyway. So these were hand triggered. I'm going to try again today with a black, shiny beetle, Pterostichus melanarius probably, and use a ring light. I'll stick some photos of the setup on here later.
These were of Ptinus tectus which I needed to photograph again as someone wanted images for their work, it's a pest of museums especially, it can cause a lot of damage to collections.
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| Ptinus tectus, Australian Spider Beetle, found in a lampshade in the house in December 2022. |
3 comments:
Congratulations on the Yellowhammer! And I do wonder how we don't find those Aussie beetles velcro'd to everything.
Such a vivid yellow found on yellowhammers!
It's a bird I miss, living here, so all the more welcome. I think I've seen two here previously, one on Papay and I think I saw one on NRon as well. The Papay one gave us a few moments, thoughts of Pine Bunting....
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