{"id":203,"date":"2015-02-22T12:39:01","date_gmt":"2015-02-22T20:39:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/?p=203"},"modified":"2015-02-22T17:48:07","modified_gmt":"2015-02-23T01:48:07","slug":"spring-arrives-in-february-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/?p=203","title":{"rendered":"Spring arrives in February this year"},"content":{"rendered":"

It may not be spring by the calendar, but the plants and birds sure think it is. We’ve gotten a very early spring here on the west coast and all the local birds are busy with mating displays and nest building. The normally easy-to-shoot Anna’s hummingbirds are non-stop bundles of energy right now, chasing each other around in mating displays. The only shot I got of one this morning was of a resting male with a bad lighting angle:<\/p>\n

\"Anna's<\/a>

Anna’s hummingbird (male)<\/p><\/div>
\n
\nThe spotted towhees, on the other hand, were out in force and much less shy than normal:<\/p>\n

\"Spotted<\/a>

Spotted towhee<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Spotted<\/a>

Spotted towhee foraging<\/p><\/div>\n

Golden-crowned sparrows were numerous as usual as well. I love golden-crowned sparrows, as they are mostly unfazed by human presence, and are super easy to find once you know the type of terrain they prefer to browse for food in:<\/p>\n

\"Golden-crowned<\/a>

Golden-crowned sparrow<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Golden-crowned<\/a>

Golden-crowned sparrow in a tree<\/p><\/div>\n

I also got a bit of a surprise finding a pair of mourning doves taking morning naps on barbed wire. While they’re relatively common birds, I hadn’t seen any in Discovery Park before. A song sparrow was hanging out next to them in full puffball mode as well.<\/p>\n

\"Mourning<\/a>

Mourning dove<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Song<\/a>

Song sparrow on barbed wire<\/p><\/div>\n

Even a Stellar’s jay, though just as skittish as usual:<\/p>\n

\"Stellar's<\/a>

Stellar’s jay<\/p><\/div>\n

New Lens<\/h4>\n

I recently picked up the Tamron 150-600mm f\/5-6.3 lens to take over for the Sigma 120-400mm f\/4.5-5.6 I’ve been using for the past year. It took a while to get used to it–last weekend I was out shooting and struggled to get good results–but after more use and listening to some tips from other birding photographers I know on the use of longer lenses like this, I’m really happy with how my shots are turning out. Each of the shots above is shot at 1\/2000s shutter at f\/9 or f\/10. I can<\/em> shoot at f\/8, but the camera body is focusing unreliably at 600mm with an f\/8 aperture (sometimes it’s sharp, sometimes soft) so f\/9 it is.\u00a0I’m really outgrowing the Nikon D3200, as this is the fastest shutter speed it has, but I’ll be upgrading in the next month or so, either to a used D7100 or, if it is finally announced, the D7200 (or whatever they end up calling it).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It may not be spring by the calendar, but the plants and birds sure think it is. We’ve gotten a very early spring here on the west coast and all the local birds are busy with mating displays and nest building. The normally easy-to-shoot Anna’s hummingbirds are non-stop bundles of energy right now, chasing each […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":215,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,10,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birding","category-gear","category-photography","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/20150222-_DSC00641.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5jxM5-3h","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":217,"href":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions\/217"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}