Birdwatching at Cosumnes River Preserve - Sacramento, California February 2020

Hello again my fellow bird people!  

Picking up from my last post - The Art of Sandhill Cranes - which focused on the beautiful cranes I found at twilight/dusk and how artful they look as they do their nightly fly in to safe waters.  

This post also has some Sandhill Crane photos but also shows a bit more of the Preserve, including the ponds where the ducks primarily gather and take us up to right when the sun sets behind the tree line and it was too dark for any more photos. 

The photos in the last post (and the first couple in this one) were taken at the ponds on the "back roads" of the Preserve - Bruceville Road and Desmond Road.  The ponds on these roads (primarily Desmond) are where I have seen Cranes flying in to.  

Cranes tend to spend the daytime hours in farmer's fields looking for food.  They fly in to ponds or near bodies of water at dusk in order to be able to easily escape into the water from nighttime predators such as coyotes.  

I have some amazing pics and videos of this process from Merced National Wildlife Refuge that I will be uploading soon, so please anticipate it.  :)

Also in these ponds, you can find other waterfowl.  Here we have some American Coots, Pintails, and Shovelers.

After spending some time in my car on Desmond Road, I headed over the the Preserve "proper" to walk the trails and boardwalk for a little bit until darkness came. 

You can almost always find egrets hanging around!

And Cranes are not the only ones who do a nightly fly-in!  Geese also follow this behavior.  It's such a beautiful sight and sound to see and hear hundreds of ducks and geese flying overhead. 

This was the view when I got to the parking lot.  The sun was low in the sky and just coming out of the clouds overhead.  What a gorgeous sight reflecting in the waters of the main ponds that front Franklin Blvd!

OMG, I am TERRIBLE at panning (following a subject in motion with a slower shutter speed), but I actually got an amazing photo!!  Why couldn't I do this during my photography assignment!?  

Seriously though, I have to give some props to the Olympus camera and M.Zuiko lens.  Wow.  It was pretty dark out and the entire photo was strongly tinted orange/pink.  In post processing, I tried to add some white back into the bird.  Not sure if it was really successful or necessary, but it's done, so...

The ducks in the main ponds settling in for the night. 

And of course the ever-present Canadians!

I kind of love this shot with the geese landing in the background. 

Another egret?  Or the same one?  I'm really not sure, but he seemed to like having his picture taken.

Oh my!  A little flock of extremely picturesque Buffleheads!!  Love these time ducks! So chic...

And equally picturesque Pintails!  Look at that blue bill!  

I really like this camera and lens combo...

And with that, the sun was sinking behind the tree line and it was really too dark to get any more photos.  

Birds, sunset, nature!  Wonderful way to end a day!

xoxo

Olympus E-M1 Mark 11 M.Zuiko 300mm lens

Birdwatch - The Art of Sandhill Cranes - Cosumnes River Preserve February 2020

Sandhill Cranes are a beautiful, fascinating, awkward-looking bird.  When you catch them in person at dusk, it can be an awe-inspiring encounter.  

I had the perfect opportunity when cruising the back roads of the Cosumnes River Preserve mid-February of 2020.  I drive along these roads from time to time but had never seen a crane here before.  I guess the timing was right as I drove along slowly with my borrowed Olympus camera and 300mm lens in hand, windows down, and heard the familiar sound of cranes flying overhead.  

I quickly pulled over in the misty twilight and saw cranes coming in  to land.  I jumped out and steadied the camera on a fence to take some shots of the lavender-tinted wonderland I found myself in and the cranes did their nightly fly-in to the shallow water for safety from nighttime predators. 

Magical.

xoxo

Olympus E-M1 Mark 11 M.Zuiko 300mm lens

January 2020 - Lake Merritt, Oakland California Birdwatching - Test and WOW!

Okay.  I'm back.  And this time I mean it!  After a rough year for everyone, I'm hoping for better times to come and want to get back to living - at least a little bit.  I found this quote (which didn't have any attribution as to origin) and I really like it.

This new year, I will love more and expect less. 

This new year I will let go more and get hurt less. 

This new year, I will live more and plan less. 

All except for the "plan less" part because as I get older I find I need to actually plan a bit more!  But the first two lines really, REALLY resonate with me.  

A wise young man recently said "You don't like me?! I don't like you."  And this is another way of looking at my new philosophy on living, loving, and letting go.  Thank you, Jeon Jung Kook, for putting it so succinctly so I can remember it at all times. You don't have to like me.  But I also don't have to worry about it!

Anyway, one of my many "changes in circumstances" this last year is that my wonderful daughter bought me an external hard drive.  I have not been wanting to edit photos for a few reasons - some mental.  But the main non-mental reason was that my computer and software were a pain in the ass.  So slow and freezy, etc., that I just couldn't stand it.  So I didn't. And then came Christmas and Yay!

It's amazing what NOT having my storage completely used up can do!  She also let me know during a conversation about software that she had a very old version of Topaz Labs DeNoise which I had been wanting to buy but couldn't justify.  So I was more than happy to have any version, even if it was old.  

BUT! Even better!  When I went to download it, it said that, since she had bought an earlier version, we were 'grandfathered' into the newest version, Denoise AI! Woot woot!!  Things are looking up!

It's an amazing product and I really recommend it. 

Now on to my first post of 2021 which contains photos from my first outing of 2020 - when Covid19 was just a whisper in the back of my mind and I was still thinking happily of future BTS concerts, travel, movies, etc.  

But on this beautiful day - 17th January in the year of our Lord 2020 - my lovely daughter agreed to accompany me for a drive and a walk along Lake Merritt in Oakland, California.  

I've posted about Lake Merritt before - along with plenty of birds, there are also some beautiful gardens!  My previous posts were from 2016, so I figured it was about time for another visit.  To check them out, follow these links!

Bird and more Birds!!

Gorgeous flowers, fat squirrels, & more!

More Gardens and birds!

On this visit, I had in hand a different camera and lens - an Olympus E-M1 mark II camera and M.Zuiko 12-200 lens.  These were "borrowed" through the Olympus Test and Wow program and Mike's Camera Sacramento.  You can rent equipment through Mike's, which I do upon occasion (mostly zoom lenses) and when I came across this opportunity to NOT pay for rentals, I jumped at the chance.  Especially as I had an Olympus camera (point and shoot) in the past which was actually a really amazing camera!

Disclaimer is that I had trouble with figuring out the settings on this unfamiliar camera and, me being me, refused to use auto mode.  So pretty much none of the photos I took were exposed correctly (although a few were close, especially towards the end).  However!  That's what post-production is for!

So these mostly came out very "dramatic".  I'm not sure if it was the camera or my horrible settings, but I kind of like them! 

I did really like the image stabilization and the focus this camera provided!  It's also a really light camera and lens combo and relatively compact.  Now on to the photos!

This first photo is a beautiful egret alongside a cormorant and some gulls as we walked along the lakefront towards the bird/nature area. We got there around 3:00pm so just as the day was getting darker.  

This is in the pond area beside the nature center.  These next couple pictures were almost BLACK.  Hence no color (the edit is actually not black and white, but no color survived) as I wasn't shooting in RAW either.

But I had to show you this cute little Black-crowned Night Heron!

The wider view of the ponds.  You can see the lake itself in the background. And, again, the only color is green.  But the focus is great!  lol  

Duck, duck, goose!  Again, spots of color from an almost black photo.  lol!  Just red and green survived apparently. 

I believe these next two are a Western Gull and a Greater Scaup.  But they could be a California Gull and a Lesser Scaup.  

And this is a really awesome photo of a Greater Scaup!  I think it's a Greater judging by the shape of its head and the white on its sides.  I love how the Olympus made the water look (only slightly aided by DeNoise).  But I do wish there was some damn color!  I actually really like this photo though. 

Male Bufflehead!  

And a lone American White Pelican!  This guy took over the Island in the middle of this lake.  You can just see the bump on his nose indicating that he/she is a breeding adult. Just chillin. 

Either a California Gull, Western Gull, or Herring Gull.  Can't see the legs so but I'm going to guess a non-breeding adult California Gull. 

Egret!

Pelican stretches and something white flies by.  :-)

Stretch finished, and his head got all tufty. 

Finally my shots are getting better!  This is a Ring-billed Gull!

Love these weird trees!  

To your left we have a cute American Coot and on the right a beautiful female Ruddy Duck

A lovely Mallard couple lit by the Golden Hour.

Pair of Western Grebes

Common Goldeneye! I actually love how the water looks in these two photos.

Grebes, Ruddy Ducks, Mallards, etc.  Birds of a feather, flocking together.  

And this!  My best picture!!!  Maybe ever!  lol  Thank you Goldeneye!  You are anything but common.  

I have some other photos from Olympus Test and Wow sessions, so we'll see if I do better with the settings on those.  Hope you enjoyed a walk by the lake from Northern California. 

xoxo

Olympus E-M1 Mark II

M Zuiko 12-200 Lens