Birds in Flight at Oliver Mill

Group of Great Black-back Gulls

My son and I travel down to Oliver Mill Park in Middleborough, Massachusetts to check on the Herring run.  My son was there in March and there was a huge amount of Herring streaming up the water toward Lake Assawompset when they breed.  Today, not only us but some other people were down checking on the Herring did not see any.  In fact, tomorrow and's Sunday, April 9 and 10th is the annual Herring run Festival at Oliver Mill Park.  That should be a good time.  Even if there are no Heron in the river.

We spent most of the time photographing gulls and Red-tailed Hawks flying.  The majority of the gulls were great black-back gulls with a scattering of Herring gulls.  A good number of the gulls were sitting on the riverbanks looking in the water for some Herring that they could catch.  But they were out of luck.

The third year Great-back Gull Flying

Great Black-back Gull In Flight

Great Black-backed Gull Coming in for a Landing and Chasing Another Gull off the Rock

Red-tailed Hawks Riding the Thermals

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Great White Shark Found at Horseneck :)

Ha!  H! A Great White Shark

Yes, a smile for the great white shark that I found at Horseneck.  Walking along, I thought I saw a fish in the wrack.  Also, a ring-billed gull also saw it and started walking toward it.  On closer inspection it was a great white shark toy that some child lost.  The gull looked at it with disgust  and walked away.

We visited Horseneck, hopefully, to count shorebirds for World Shorebird Day and all we saw was probably 15 sandelings.  We spent most of the time at Horseneck photographing gulls in various stages of plumage and action.  A great black-backed gull caught a crab and was chased by another gull wanting to steal it but the great black-backed gull was smart.  It flew away.  Landed and ran as fast as it could to get away from the other gulls.  Seeing this happen a pair of Herring gulls screamed at the great black-backed gull.

Great Black-Back Gull with the Crab Being Chased

Great Black-Back Gull with Lady Crab

Vocalizing

As the sanderlings were running around feeding, ring-billed gulls stayed close to them, hoping to steal a mole crab. However, the sanderling that caught a mole crab flew away faster than the gull.

Sanderling

Ring-Billed Gull among Sanderlings Feeding

We were lucky in that an Osprey was searching for fish near the shore hovered then dove, and we were able to catch it coming up with a large fish.  We have photographed Osprey in the past, diving, but never catching them right after they caught a fish.  First coming out of the water, the Osprey had one claw in the fish and then as it was starting to fly off, it grabbed a the fish with the second claw, and off it flew.

Osprey Catching a Fish

Osprey Catching a Fish

Walking back to the car, we found morning around in the sand juvenile ghost crabs.  They are very fast-moving but one stayed still long enough for us to be able to take pictures, looking at its front and also looking at its back.

Ghost Crab

Ghost Crab

Still hoping to find more shorebirds, we traveled to Gooseberry where all we found was three semipalmated plovers and one spotted sandpiper.

Semipalmated Plover

Although, we did not find many different species of shorebirds.  It still was a great day being out photographing.

Gulls, Gulls, and More, Gulls

Gulls in-flight

While you are out enjoying our natural world and photographing the interesting items that there, do not forget about very common site, so species that you see.  Because goals are very common.  Many people ignore them, but they are a excellent subject to learn bird photography.  The reason is that gulls are easy to photograph in flight, especially when they hover two it is easy to bring them into a Jew by offering them a treat such as a piece of bread and, except when they are resting.  They are usually doing interesting things.  What also makes gulls an interesting subject is to identify the different plumages that gulls go through.  Depending on the species they can take anywhere from 2 to 4 years for that species of gold to get their adult plumage.  Also, a number of gulls change plumage between summer and winter.  This can make it harder to identify what species of gulls you are viewing.  Also, Southern New England, we will occasionally get a rarity such as an ivory gull.  Remember what is common now in the past was a rarity.  I remember while in high school and working at the Museum of science a great sighting that would see on the dock at the Charles River was a great black-backed gull.  Right now, laughing gulls breed here in New England and yet it was not that long ago that they were a rarity.

Ring-billed Gull

Juvenile Herring Gull Begging for Food

Adult and Juvenile Laughing Gull

Ring-billed Gull Searching for Food

Ring--billed Gull

Juvenile Herring Gull with Food

"Crossbill" Laughing Gull

 Despite having it is bill crossed this juvenile laughing gull seems to be well nourished

Great Black-backed Gull Fighting over Food

Great Black-Backed Gull Taking Off

Ivory Gull

So when you go out, do not forget what is now called common.

The Morning at Plymouth

Killdeer

Waking up to a thunderstorm this morning, I checked the weather forecast and found that Plymouth would not have any rain until about 11 AM.  The gang piled into the car and we went to Plymouth's starting at Nelson's Beach.  The tide was out and there were many shorebirds running around.  We were able to photograph semipalmated plovers, semipalmated sandpipers, greater yellowlegs, plus seeing and photographing herring gull, Ring-billed gull, laughing gull and great black-backed gull.  Most of the semipalmated sandpipers that we saw were this year's hatching, since their colors and feathers were so bright.

Least Sandpiper

Ring-Billed Gull

Laughing Gull

Semipalmated Plovers in Flight

Also, on the Osprey nest was one Osprey which finally took off and flew around and then came back and landed on the nest, giving us some good flight pictures.  I second Osprey came in and circled around and then went back out into Plymouth Bay.

Osprey Landing on Nest

After finishing up at Nelson's.  We traveled over to Jenny pond and besides the usual docs, we photographed Great Blue Heron, and Black-capped Night-Heron.  Standing on the bridge, first hoping that the belted Kingfisher would come back so we did get some photographs.  We turned our attention beneath us, and there were a number of painted turtles swimming in the pond.  Although we photographed the painted turtles without a polarizer, In LightRoom by utilizing the dehaze filter.  We were able to take away the reflections on the top of the water.

Great Blue Heron

Juvenile Black-Crowd Night Heron in Flight

Painted Turtles Swimming Underwater

We then stopped at the Lobster Pound to pick up some lobster bisque and I searched the rocks for birds, there were double-crested Cormorants, herring gulls, great black back gulls, common loon, tree swallows, but swallows northern rough-winged swallows and cliff swallows.  Leaving Manomet Point, we started to hit some rain and headed home having a great morning.

New information: On Tuesday, August 25th Topaz will be releasing Topaz ReMask 5, an updated version of their masking software, complete with new features. As always, there update is free to anyone who already owns ReMask. And for those who don't own it, ReMask 5 will be on sale ($20 off) from August 25th – September 18th.  The coupon code "GetReMask5" so you can take advantage of the discounted price of $49.99 (regularly $69.99).

You can link directly to the ReMask product page with this URL: http://www.topazlabs.com/aff/idevaffiliate.php?id=850&url=http://www.topazlabs.com/remask

New Sharpening Technique from Topaz Labs

In my last blog, I told you I would show you my workflow on how I remove noise from my photographs.  Since then I also watch the video from Topaz lab on a neat trick on how to sharpen an image without increasing the noise in the image.  In order to utilize this process.  You need Lightroom and Photoshop, along with Topaz Denoise.  Here is the URL for the video: http://blog.topazlabs.com/tutorials/image-sharpening-trick/

In the video Using Topaz DeNoise to sharpen an image? Now that something new to us. A technique he invented, watch as photographer Gabriel Fontes teaches you how to sharpen a high-ISO image without worsening the noise artifacts.
About the presenter: A 17 year old from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Fontes shoots with a Pentax K-3 and variety of lenses

I photographed a herring gull eating an alewife at the Herring run at Oliver Mill Park in Middleborough, Massachusetts.  I had used the camera.  The night before to do some night photography and had my ISO set to 1600.  Now I thought I change the ISO 400.  However, I did not.  I will show you the original picture and then the picture after I ran Fonte's technique on it.

Original

Herring Gull Eating a Herring after Applying the New Technique

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A Great Morning in Plymouth

Red-shouldered Hawk

Monday morning I spent in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and had a very productive morning.  We started out at Jenney Pond.  First, we were looking for the wood duck which we could not find.  Utilizing crack corn we were able to bring most of the mallards in and I was able to get some flight shots, utilizing my 70-200 mm lens with it 2X converter.  Suddenly all of ducks took off and flew.  Why?  Looking up, we saw a hawk flying overhead, which then landed in a nearby tree.  We slowly approached the hawk, and utilizing my 500 mm lens with a 1.4 converter on it, we were able to get many pictures of the red-shouldered hawk.  After the hawk flew off, a bread-breasted merganser swam by in the river and I was able to capture it with my camera.

Next, we traveled down to two Plymouth Harbor, to the parking lot behind The East Side Grille, where we found in the small area of open water, common eiders, feeding.  The eiders were catching clams and crabs.  Suddenly, herring gulls decided that they wanted the choice morsels that the eiders were catching and started attacking the eiders.  Most of the time, the eiders dove, to get away and was able to eat the prey.  One time however, the gull caused the eider to drop the food under the water, with the gull dove and got the clam and so it got to enjoy the food.

On the bridge leading to the jetty there was a third year great black-backed gull.

The last stop was Cordage Park, where the main attraction was mallards.  And again, utilizing crack corn were able to get a number of flight pictures.

I took the pictures from the day and turned it into a video slideshow which can be seen at: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6mln38k1pop7g8p/ProShow%20Slideshow.avi?dl=0

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Westport Harbor

Mute swan sitting on the ice

Sunday, after the snow stopped and the sun came out.  We traveled down to Westport Harbor hopefully to to do some photographing of ducks and gulls.  When we arrived, the sky was still overcast.  The tide was outgoing and there was still a lot of ice surrounding the docks.  We were able to see a number of different species of ducks, plus the gulls.  What I did was set the camera on manual, set my speed and aperture and went to auto ISO so I could obtain the correct exposure.

Greater black-back gulls be an opportunistic feeder were trying to get into the bait barrels on the dock to get a free meal.  Herring gulls, however, found snails and scallops to feed on.

Greater black-backed gull getting a skate from the bait bucket

Herring gull with a snail

Herring gull flying with a scallop in its beak

A Drake Bufflehead flew by and I was happy to capture one sharp image out of my series.  For tiny bird, they fly extremely fast.  We identified and photographed at the harbor and across on the other side near the Back Eddy and identified many species including Canada geese, common eiders, Bullhead, red-breasted merganser, hooded merganser, American Widgeon, scaup, common goldeneye and a horned Grebe.

Drake Bufflehead in flight

American Widgeon, feeding

and Bufflehead

Drake hooded merganser and hen red-breasted merganser

Canada goose landing over a scaup

Drake red breasted merganser

If the cold weather keeps up and all the ponds and habits freeze we should see more concentrations of ducks and other birds at locations that have open water, where there is food available.

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