Birding

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Birds (and more) from a brief trip to the Dominican Republic

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In early June I flew to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, for a friend’s wedding at a resort on the coast north of the city. Naturally, despite the limited time there and the schedule for the wedding, I made some time for some bird photography, with little regard for the amount of photography equipment I had to haul along with me.

At the resort there was a small eco-park, which was well populated by native, wild birds. These birds being accustomed to human presence, getting these photos was not especially challenging, but it was certainly fun!

Click on the photos if you want to view them in fullscreen (and use the arrow keys to move through them).

Antillean mangos were around if you paid attention, but there weren’t all that many flowering plants around, so I only saw a few:

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Aside

What’s On Deck

I’ll resume more regular posting in the next month or so, but in the meantime:

  • I’m working on finding a new job, since my current contract is about to hit its max of 18 months
  • I’ve started diving into improving my incredibly poor grasp of Spanish using the excellent Duolingo, as it will become useful as I continue my travels around the (mostly tropical) Americas and Caribbean
  • I have my first trip dedicated to birding lined up: in the third week of September I’ll be spending four days at Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge
  • Nikon is releasing their new 200-500mm f/5.6 lens in the middle of September and I’m very tempted to buy it. I’ve liked the Tamron 150-600mm but I’m not entirely satisfied with its sharpness at f/8, and the bokeh at f/9 and above is very harsh
  • My next sailing course, ASA 106, is happening the first weekend of October, where I’ll be learning advanced techniques in coastal sailing including anchoring and sailing at night
  • And of course the San Juans charter trip I’ve detailed previously will be occurring over Labor Day weekend, and marking the second time I’ll be a skipper during a sailing charter, and the first time I’ve put the entire thing together by myself
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Hummingbird overload at Discovery Park

This past weekend (June 13th & 14th) I spent each morning at Discovery Park, arriving before 7am each day to coincide with the peak of activity by small birds. Specifically, I went looking for rufous hummingbirds before they begin migrating south to Mexico in the next two months.

What ended up happening (after a nice person in the park told me where he’d seen dozens of hummingbirds buzzing about) was probably the two best days of hummingbird photography I’ve had yet. More importantly, it gave me a lot of practice shooting these tiny, fast creatures, as well as an idea on an equipment modification I could make that I’m going to have to try to fabricate (possibly with the help of a 3D printer) which, if I end up doing, I’ll detail in a future blog post.

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Oh Lightroom, how I’ve missed you

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Adobe’s Lightroom 6 was released this week, bearing with it support for various new camera models including my Nikon D7200. What a relief! Nikon’s Capture NX-D software is terrible and slow, so despite some online purchasing difficulty with Adobe, everything is back up and running.

Thus, I’ve gone back through the last several weeks of D7200 photos with a culling and editing pass. I’m only partway through and have found a number of photos I’d passed over in Capture NX-D.

Female Red-breasted Nuthatch

Female Red-breasted Nuthatch

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Meadowbrook Pond, Seattle

I spent a short time this morning at Meadowbrook Park, a small wildlife sanctuary in the middle of a residential Seattle neighborhood. There were numerous house and song sparrows, Anna’s hummingbirds, a few various species of duck, red-winged blackbirds, and a couple of blue herons.

Didn’t get many pictures I particularly liked this morning, but made up for quantity with quality in two I’m very happy with.

Great blue heron headshot

Great blue heron headshot

Song sparrow close-up

Song sparrow close-up

Also: It’s less than two weeks until I’m in the British Virgin Islands on a 44′ sailing catamaran (that I’m the captain of!) and I couldn’t be more excited.