Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Birds bit noisy, pictures less so

Looking sharp along my favourite country road today, an Australasian Pipit (Anthus novaeseelandiae), one of scores active and even singing a bit on road, grass and fencing. 


Awkwardly posed, but also sharp, a Horsfield's Bushlark (Mirafra javanica). Plenty of song from this and a few others of the species.


And from Tyto today two views of a cheery churry Brown-backed Honeyeater (Ramsayornis modestus), building, yet again, in front of the hide. 


Those bored by camera details should look away now. All the above images shot at ISO 400. No noise reduction applied. Lately been told Canon uses under and over exposure tweaking to provide intermediate ISOs from the primary 100 200 400 800 etc. Pushing 200 to 250 (my previous preferred setting) creates picture noise. Helps explain high ISOs many use. Nikons don't have the problem.


Back to today's birds. Bit of takeaway food for immature Black-necked Stork (Ephippiorhynchus asiaticus). 


But turtle proved too tough a nut to crack. Even mature birds try and fail to open turtles up. I suspect, on rather limited observations,  that White-bellied Sea-eagles get to the meat of things by carrying turtles up and dropping them. However, I've only ever seen the pickup.                 
Click pix to enlarge   

4 comments:

Mark Young said...

Lovely images Tony, especially the turtle in the Jabiru's bill.

Tyto Tony said...

Cheers, Mark. Sort of two heads in one ;-)

Denis Wilson said...

Don't complain about any "noise" there, Tony.
Fabulous long distance work.
Denis

Tyto Tony said...

But we always want to sneak that little bit closer, don't we?

Head up for dragonfly, head off for fish head . . .

One moment it's dragonfly trying to dance on White-bellied Sea-Eagle's head, the next it's all go for fisher's discarded fis...