Winter birds

    One of our favorite venues for winter birds in the Orange County area is the Black Dirt farming region out near Pine Island.  Most serious birders in the area are quite familiar with Skinner's Lane and what treasures it can yield if you are there at the right time.  With only a few days left before Sharon and I head to warmer climes, I decided to travel out to the black dirt area and see if I could score any of our northern birds to add to my year list while we are still in the area.

     The winter weather has been absolutely brutal here in the northeast with not a single day above freezing in the past two weeks.  Today, the temps were hovering around 10 degrees with a strong steady wind chill of below zero.  Of course with the farms fields offering absolutely no wind breaks, I decided it would be wisest to do most of my shooting from the relative comfort of my vehicle.  Birds seem to be quite comfortable with an SVU slowly approaching and will not readily flee, so the use of my RAV served two purposes.

     With close to a foot of new fallen snow on the ground, the birds were working the fields where the steady winds had removed much of the powder exposing seeds from the previous season's crops.  Large flocks of Horned larks were the bird d'jour and were so busy foraging for their dinner that they paid me little heed.  I scanned the flocks in the hopes of finding a second species, perhaps a longspur or Snow bunting, but the larks were the only show in town.

     Periodically, a flock would lift up and fly a short distance to another relatively bare spot of ground on which to feed.  A second flock would soon come in to take over the area the first had vacated.  Even with the shelter of the SVU, I found I could only keep the window down for a short time and photograph the closest birds before the cold winds convinced me to roll that window up and let the heater do its work.  Still, the trip out to the black dirt was well worth the effort and I was more than happy to have "braved" the brief sub-zero temps to see these beautiful birds one more time before we  head south.

     Tech Tip of the day - A few tips for shooting in snowscapes like I encountered today.  First of all, manual focus is usually the way to go.  Auto focusing will be tricky when you are photographing a light colored subject against a white background.  In the case of these birds, many were dark enough so that I could use spot focusing in the auto mode to get a decent image, but manual was much more reliable.  Also, when shooting from a vehicle, make sure to turn the engine off! Even at idle, the motion of the engine can give you enough shimmer to cause the image to appear out of focus.  Finally, with bright sunlight against the white snow, you'll have more than enough light. So, use aperture priority and set it for f/8 or f/11 to give you decent depth of field.