Eric/ John's Advanced photography course

A year on from Eric's Beginner photography course was today's 'Advanced' photography fieldtrip, again at Sycamore Hill, Wicklow.
I left Drimnagh just before 7.30am and was at Sycamore for 8.15am, a coffee and away to Wexford.
Well that was the plan, but I decided I'd stay behind with Katie and Celia who were there for a beginner lesson with 'Wings' magazine front page hogger, John Fox.

The plan was to join Eric and the others down in Wexford once we'd finished a quick overview of camera settings, fstops, shutter speed, all that fun stuff, but as it turned out, once we'd finished our class, we decided to stay local and practice some photography round the house with a drive down to Killoughter to possibly see the juv Osprey which has been seen around Broad lough.

Celia and Katie putting John's teaching to practice on the birds in the garden.

After another coffee (thanks Hazel), and having asked John all the questions we could think of, John drove us down to Killoughter so we could practice some more 'in the field photography'.

Killoughter Railway station, Co Wicklow.

Depth of Field Lesson.

This photo was taken at f5 (iso 320, 1/640 speed). I focused on the larger stone in the centre of the photo. As you can see the depth of field at f5 is very shallow, only the immediate area I'm focused on is actually in focus and there's a soft blur everywhere else. This is the setting most birders use. At f5 you get a lot of light hitting your camera sensor, so you get a quicker shutter speed which allows sharper photos. Ideally you'd use f4, but my 150-500 lens only goes to f5.

I took the same shot for every f stop on my camera, the final fstop being f22, this is the f22 shot. Still focused on the larger stone, you can see that the smaller f stop of 22 gives a much larger depth of field and now nearly everything is in focus. This f stop is pretty useless for bird photography as the shutter speed slows right down, so any movement at all fro the bird will turn out blurred. (this was 1/30 compared to the 1/640 at f5)

Once you cross the railway line at Killoughter, you turn right towards Bray, walk down some fields, past this derelict building, on a bit further and the lough is behind some hedges on the right past an old gravel quarry. I'd never been before, so it was nice to go somewhere different. Thanks to Hazel for showing us how to get there.

Derelict building on way to Broad lough 'End Garda intimidation disband special branch'.

Unfortunately I didn't actually get any decent photos to show off what I learnt today from John.

We also did manage a far away sighting of the juvenile Osprey flying over the north end of the lough, it started to look as though it was going to fly right over us, but instead turned away and flew back behind the far trees.
 

Juvenile Osprey at Broad lough, Wicklow. It's assumed from Southern Europe on migration to Africa.

When the Osprey disappeared behind the trees we waited another 45 minutes, taking photos of some far away Bartailed godwits, Ringed plover and Dunlin, when there was still no sign of it returning we decided we'd leave and see what was down at ECNR.
2 minutes after we left Broad lough, the Osprey (apparently) re appeared, swooped over the lough and grabbed two fish, one in each tallon.
That's right, an Osprey swooped over the lough and caught a fish in each tallon.
We could have seen it if we'd waited another 2 minutes.
But that's how it goes!

Gutted.com.

this Ringed plover was -0.3 (iso 320, f6.3, 1/1000), nice, but a little too dark

and this juvenile Stonechat was -0.7 (iso 320, f6.3, 1/320), which actually doesn't look too bad in this photo.

Male Stonechat, great to see them about again. Iso 320, f6.3, 1/160 - very slow shutter speed.

I think today was the second of several other courses being run at Sycamore hill from now until December.

There's more info on all Sycamore Hill courses on Eric's 'Bird's Ireland' website here: http://www.birdsireland.com/workshops

I'd obviously recommend all of them having already taken most of the courses at this stage.
Huge thanks to John, Eric and Hazel for creating such a lovely learning environment.

iwepts sept 2012

7.30am The wooden bridge, Clontarf, Sat 15th September 2012

7.35am Bull Island - lots of daylight still.

Jerry, back of John, Ger and the new boy, Denis.

Helen and Laura joined us and the fun began.

We were given our sections, we started counting, the fun drained away.

Not to put anyone off volunteering for iwebs within the 2nd sentence! because it is a good thing to do, but as soon as we started counting we were quickly reminded that iwebs, by its nature, is daunting.

Well, if you want to try and be accurate, it can be daunting; if you didn't care, you could look out at the mudflats, look at all the waders, react with a 'meh', make up some numbers, shout 'finished' and go drink coffee - but we are good little volunteers, so we get to bitch and moan, because if you want to get good counts, iwebs is a bit of a head wreck.
(unless of course you get to 'do' the beach - then you just get to sit on a rock, sip coffee and look wistfully out to sea).

So anyways, me and Denis got on with our counts, bitched and moaned (sign of a good volunteer), decided that sections 3 and 4 were extremely difficult, by far the hardest of all sections in Ireland, congratulated ourselves on being amazing people for giving it a go, made up a master plan of how to do the section differently next month, and before we knew it, we were finished.

Luckily there weren't actually all that many birds around today, hardly any in fact, so we finished up relatively early, and to be honest, it was probably one of the easiest iwebs counts I've done so far (thanks Denis).
The tide didn't rush in, the weather was great, it was very calm and still, no wind, no rain, no fog, no mist, no watery eyes, no snotty nose, no frozen hands, no tantrums, it was warm, maybe 13º, so the two of us were able to take our time, chat, count, we even managed a good look at a Peregrine perched on a post which Denis spotted.

Of note from today's count were early arrivals of Brent Geese, possibly around 100, I counted 240 Common gulls! never seen anymore than 20 in the one go, so to see 240 was incredible.
No Dunlin in our sections, no Knot, no Pintails, no Shovelers, 4 Shelduck, not many Oystercatchers in comparison to the numbers me and Jim saw in August, no Plovers at all - that we saw. 50ish GBB gulls, Helen got Wigeon and Teal....  and the perched Peregrine.

So that was our Sept iwebs, started 8ish, finished by 9.40am.

After iwebs, I drove over to Crumlin to see if I could see this Raven being reported by Stephen Lawlor
on Irish Birding.
He's also managed to see an adult Med gull (Clonmacnoise roundabout/ Bangor circle, Crumlin), Buzzard (soaring over Crumlin/ Drimnagh) and Merlin (Landsdowne valley park, Drimnagh) in the last few weeks.
Of course I didn't see any from his list today.

But I did see a Common gull in with the Herring gulls and Black headed gulls on Clonmacnoise roundabout.

Adult Common Gull, Clonmacnoise roundabout, Crumlin, Dublin 12

Size of Common gull in comparison to the juv Herring gull and Black headed gull in distance.

Adult Common gull

juvenile Starling, Crumlin, Dublin 12

Adult Starling, Crumlin, Dublin 12 - there was a flock of around 120.

Just look at the brush stroke precision of the plumage

Not the sharpest photo of a Rook, but I love that dagger bill and near blue tones going through the feathers.

2 juvenile Rooks, Crumlin

Would you just get off!

Whev.

So there you go, there's a post for you.

No more official complaints to the blog ombudsman please.
Cold weather and long dark nights make for lots of posts, warm weather and long bright evenings make for few.