Yeah. I was walking along the beach concentrating on the shorebirds when they all freaked out, and looking up I saw the peregrine come blasting in. It took me a few seconds to get my camera ready (one of the drawbacks to using a bridge camera is that there’s about a 3-second delay between my turning it on and the lens extending to full zoom), and by then I only had one close dive to try to get a photo.

It was mostly a point-and-pray situation. I’ve gotten better at keeping both eyes open so I can center a bird in the field of view of the camera, but in this case the sun was off to one side and it kind of blinded my right (viewfinder) eye such that I couldn’t really see what I was doing.

I managed to get a few shots, one of which I cropped and uploaded to eBird; that’s the image above. I wish it were sharper. I’m not sure if the problem was focus or motion blur, but I suspect the latter.

A few frames later as the bird pulled out of the dive I got this shot:

And then as he or she was flying away I got some more images, including this one:

They’re all a little blurry. I think I want to revisit my default settings so they’re better suited for birds in flight. In this case I ended up with ISO 100 and 1/2000 for the shutter speed. I think I would have been better off with higher ISO and a faster shutter.

Next time I’ll be better prepared.

Reposted from https://lies.tumblr.com/post/672672205715505152.

txtokenman:

Reposted from https://lies.tumblr.com/post/671561706944839681.

Sometimes when I’m birdwatching

Reposted from https://lies.tumblr.com/post/651166656614301696.

anonsally:

I haven’t been following the nestcam as closely this year, so I didn’t realise the banding was happening this morning. This year, it turns out that all three chicks are male. The naming contest has begun–the first stage is to reply to the tweet with your suggestion. Finalists will be voted on next week. 

So far, I’m partial to someone’s suggestion of “Pfizer, Moderna, & JJ”. However, I think they want names that are connected to UC Berkeley in some way. Last year’s chicks were named after the state plants (Poppy, Sequoia, and Redwood). So now I’m thinking, what is quintessentially Californian? …I thought of Drought, Wildfire, and Earthquake, but that would be a pretty dark direction to go. 

The three winged horsemen of the apocalypse. Truly a golden age for epidemiological falcon-naming humor.

Reposted from https://lies.tumblr.com/post/651061879009083392.

hiimlesphotos:

Windy Day

Reposted from https://lies.tumblr.com/post/187799406965.

sugiichi:

Falco peregrinus [ハヤブサ,Peregrine Falcon]

この日はお目当ての子には会えず。

でも、2か所でハヤブサに遭遇(^O^)

1羽は土鳩の群れに何度か突撃してましたが、空振り(^^;;

もう1羽は移動中だったのかな？

12月下旬撮影

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/183782914157.

hiimlesphotos:

Watching the Kingfisher

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/181209772376.