Bird Behavior, Bathing and Photography

The fun of photographing birds at of the animals is capturing the unusual.  Partly it can be luck, but also it is understanding the behavior of the animal that you are observing and trying to photograph.  I have a large number of images of ducks and gulls swimming and walking, so lately I've been observing them in order to capture of the behavior.  One of the events that I have observed is that when birds bathing and preening, they will usually rise and spread their wings, which gives you different action and behavioral photographs.  The idea is to have patience observe and be prepared for that event.  The other day when I was down at Jenney Pond in Plymouth, Massachusetts, both Mallards and Ring-billed Gulls were preening and bathing, which led to some interesting photographs. 
In order to help people with their photography, I am going to provide some technical information on what equipment I used and what settings and further information on post processing.
I utilized a Nikon D7000, with a Sigma 300 mm f 2 .8 lens along with a Sigma 1.4 tele-converter.  Because the Nikon D7000 has a 1.5 crop sensor, my equivalent focal length was 630 mm.  I used a monopod - Monostat-RS, which I love because of its large swivel toe stabilizer that prevents involuntary movements and yet permits smooth motion, and the horizontal for photographing moving objects.

For this photograph, I wanted a partial blur.  So I had set my f-stop to f 13 and my shutter speed was 1/250 sec.  For all my photographs, I had my ISO set at 400.
For this series of pictures my f-stop was f 7 .1 and the shutter speed ranged between 1/1001/250th of a sec. For more infoation about creating blurs check out A GUIDE TO PLEASING BLURS by Arthur Morris and Denise Ippolito at http://deniseippolito.com/prints/


Mallards:

Male Mallard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ring-bill Gulls   

Post processing was done in Lightroom and with NIK software, Viveza 2 and Color Efex Pro 4, which allowed me to control the contrast, saturation and the detail in the pictures.

As I continue to look at the pictures, what I identified as mallards, except for the male Mallard.  O am thinking that the pictures are more of a Black Duck-Mallard hybrid, because of the bill color and that there is a touch of green on the ducks head

Tree Swallow - Swarming

Earlier this month, I had made a visit to Gooseberry in Westport Massachusetts to do some photography. While I was sitting on the beach photographing the shorebirds and the ducks that were present I was watching the flight of swallows coming in from the mainland. When I turned around the swallows were gathering on the Phragmites in moderate large numbers.
Ah Hah I said it is getting to be that season of the year when the tree swallows gathered together in preparation for their migration. In August and September they gather in the marshes and fields by the sea, with their numbers increasing daily.
Most of the swallows that were present were tree swallows although there were some barn swallows and rare rough-winged swallows mixed into the large group.
Gooseberry is one of the gathering areas as well as Sachuest National Wildlife Refuge in Middletown Rhode Island
Yesterday, my colleague Doug and I returned to Gooseberry to do additional birding and of course from the photography. The numbers of shorebirds were increasing along the beach. But, the numbers of swallows that were present were enormous. There were hundreds if not thousands of them swarming over the mid-portion of the island.
I am inserting a video of the birds swarming, plus additional pictures including some blurs that I made.

Swarming Tree Swallows

JJust standing there with the multitude of swallows flying around over your head and around you is just breathtaking. So if you have a chance, go visit Gooseberry and enjoy the swallows