A passion for birds...: Grey Fantail

Showing posts with label Grey Fantail. Show all posts

Saturday, 19 March 2016

Bunyip State Park + Warburton

It has been way too long since I have been out birding so, despite the weather forecast, I was glad to get out into Bunyip State Park today with the Melbourne Birdlife Photography group.

We spent the morning at Dyer's Picnic Ground on the delightfully named Black Snake Creek Road. Unfortunately, the weather prediction was pretty much spot on: heavily overcast with frequent showers. This made the light very poor and there were not many birds around but when life gives you lemons, make lemonade...so I took the opportunity to practice using fill flash with the Better Beamer. This requires a balancing act of finding the right ISO and aperture settings to get the background exposure with enough light so you don't get a bird on black background and dropping the flash power sufficiently to not over expose the bird or make the flash look too obvious. The two shots below are the best I came up with during the morning but I didn't quite get the balance right - there's still too much flash. This is most noticeable in the eyes - ideally you need to get the flash off camera as much as possible but I don't have a flash bracket so there's a little work needed in Lightroom to remove the eyeshine. Also, the shadows in the background are too obvious - this mostly due to the background being too close to the subject. Ideally, it is good practice to watch your background and move around o get the best possible background but there's not much you can do with small birds in low vegetation and you only have a few seconds to get the shot.

Brown Thornbill, Dyer's Picnic Ground, Bunyip State Park
Pentax K-3, Sigma 300mm f/2.8 + 1.4x adapter, ISO 800, f/5.6, 1/180 (+fill flash)

Grey Fantail, Dyer's Picnic Ground, Bunyip State Park
Pentax K-3, Sigma 300mm f/2.8 + 1.4x adapter, ISO 800, f/5.6, 1/180 (+fill flash)

The afternoon stops did not yield much worth photographing so I took a drive through the park through to Powelltown, where I planned to take at least a short walk along the Powelltown Rail Trail but, as I arrived, it started to rain heavily so I continued the scenic drive through some back tracks to Warburton, where I managed to find a pair of Australian Wood Ducks roosting on a tree in the Yarra River.

Australian Wood Duck (male), Yarra River, Warburton
Pentax K-3, Sigma 300mm f/2.8 + 1.4x adapter, ISO 800, f/9, 1/180 (+fill flash)

Australian Wood Duck (female), Yarra River, Warburton
Pentax K-3, Sigma 300mm f/2.8 + 1.4x adapter, ISO 800, f/9, 1/180 (+fill flash)

The combination of larger birds and greater separation from the background made these shots more successful with the fill flash.

Sunday, 8 June 2014

A Long Weekend in SW Victoria: Part 3. Lower Glenelg National Park

The Glenelg River meanders from the Grampians through south-west Victoria eventually spilling into the Southern Ocean at Nelson. The Lower Glenelg National Park surrounds the navigable part of the river and its surrounding forest. We drove through the park this afternoon following the river, stopping at scenic lookouts and river access points.

Glenelg River, Lower Glenelg National Park

We went on several walks and found lots of birds but they were mostly in the treetops and out of photographic range.

Perhaps the most common bird seen and heard was the Grey Fantail and this character spent about 10 minutes feeding on insects in a shady spot in one picnic ground. It was so dark that even after pushing the ISO to 1600, I was still shooting at around 1/60th of a second making it impossible to capture the fast moving bird. The flash did allow me to capture a couple of shots and because the bird was close to the background the flash filled behind the bird.

Grey Fantail, Lower Glenelg National Park

Just near the end of our travels through the park, we spotted a flock of about 8 Yellow-tailed Black-Cockatoos that hung around long enough for a good look and a few photographs. As with many parrots, even when hanging around in larger flocks, pairs of birds often are found close together as seen here (males have the red eye ring, where in females the eye ring is pale grey).

Yellow-tailed Black-Cockatoo, Glenelg River National Park

There were also several species of plants flowering spectacularly including Victoria's floral emblem, Pink Heath. I found this specimen while on a walk. I'd left the smaller zooms and macro lenses in the car so tried my best using the 600mm worth of lens (300mm + 2x tele-convertor) I had mounted on the camera. The ultra-telephoto flattened out the image a little too much so I used some fill flash that added a bit more depth to the shot.

Pink Heath, Epacris impressa,
Lower Glenelg National Park

I did bring the macro lens on the next walk and managed a couple of shots (albeit hand held).

Native Fuchsia, Correa reflexa,
Lower Glenelg National Park

Silver Banksia, Banksia marginata,
Lower Glenelg National Park

The rest of the weekend:
Part 1. Cape Nelson
Part 2. Sunrise at Bridgewater Bay
Part 4. Shore Birds

Sunday, 3 February 2013

Oswin Roberts Reserve: Fairy-wrens and Fantails

I spent the late afternoon walking the tracks of Oswin Roberts Reserve on Phillip Island.

For most of the walk, the best description of the birdlife was high density but low diversity. I saw only five species of birds and heard another two in the first 30 minutes BUT I have never been anywhere with as many Superb Fairy-wrens and Grey Fantails.

I saw at least 10 male Superb Fairy-wrens along the path, each with its accompanying females and non-breeding males.

You don't really notice, until you manage to photograph it serendipitously, that small birds such as fairy-wrens don't flap their wings to take off, they leap into the air first.

Some of these birds got very close while I just stood on the track. These two shots are almost full frame (I just did some minor cropping to clean up the edges).