don't watch the news

 

If you find the news massively depressing just don't watch it. You'd be surprised how easy it is to walk away and leave the phone at home. Maybe to a cemetery or another quiet place. Go and get some fresh air!

6th April

Neither sunny nor gloomy but moments of both. The birds are busy nest building. But are happy to stop for a snack and to say hello. I am spending more time down in the Riverside area these days. I put seeds and bread out and the smaller birds gather in the surrounding trees. Making plenty noise and bouncing about while I try to take their pictures. We all seem to enjoy it enough to continue this merry dance while the planet goes to hell in a handcart. It is much better for the heart than watching the news.

The squirrels regularly appear. If I have not put food on their stone - a pedestal from a toppled gravestone - they will stand and whistle, acting all innocent, until the situation is rectified. Generally they are really good natured. Like the birds, there are rarely any complaints if I am late or don't show up for days, or don't put out much. They accept the situation and rarely give me backchat.

blue tit gathering nesting materials

Meanwhile in the secret garden I put the camera in shutter priority again to see what happens when I shoot at high speed to freeze the movements of the garden birds as they arrive and leave the feeding tables. I had hoped that exposure speeds like 1/1250 of a sec (as above) would be fast enough to freeze wing motion. Without too much grain & noise. Yes and no. There wasn't enough light available to crank speeds into the several thousandths (is that a word?) of a second. Mixed results. I had hoped 1/1600 of a second would freeze everything. It does not. Those small wings go VERY fast. Onwards and upwards. I also had a plan B (another camera - blog coming soon!!!) but that is for another occasion.

Meanwhile I was testing a few things round the cemetery. I had looked into how to set the camera up to get slow motion video of birds in flight. Since you have to use manual focus to do this I decided it would be easiest to get the birds to fly to me. So I struck a deal with the 3 robins who will come to my hand for a small bribe. They would give me the nod when they were about to leave the perch and as soon as I saw this I pushed the start button with the focus being on my left hand (where they would land) and as much of the surrounding area as possible. As usual my expectations were greater than the actual results.

The results were okay but not outstanding. And the specific settings for slo-mo cut out audio and are not quite as slow (and detailed) as I'd hoped for. I quite liked the slowed (garden birds) audio on the blackbirds dancing video which sounded like tropical birds in a rainforest.  It is quite difficult to coordinate the various elements. Like the sun shining while the birds are suitably keen. (After a couple of mouthfuls of snacks they are too full to do anything more for about an hour.) And then hit the right button at the right time and keep the camera in the right hand trained on the right spot on the left. 

work in progress

Anyway I should probably count my blessings that we live in an age where all of this is possible for a relatively modest outlay. When I was young, all of this would have have taken a TV studio, huge expensive cameras and a team of technical experts. Now we can all have access to mess about with these things, if only we'd switch off the news for long enough. 

great tit in front, pigeon behind

even 1/1600 sec doesn't freeze the action

and stay off says the coal tit
dunnock doesn't drop his seed though

Oh that was another thing I tried. Burst mode. Continuous shooting. I had avoided this until now. But good to know where the button is that you turn and before you can say that's handy you have filled your hard drive with a million nearly identical photos, each one yea big. True story. I have actually broken my computer due to running out of hard drive space. Another story and another complaint for another blog. Much deleting required. In fact just stay away from that button except in very special circumstances. And even then. Probably don't. 

I had been trying to capture the moment of landing or taking off. Again, the result not quite up to the anticipated award winning shots I imagined. But I did manage to fill and break my PC. So there! Be warned!

a bit grainy and pixellated
but not bad for 1/1250 and 2500 iso

not as freeze frame as hoped at 1/1250

mixed bathing - great tit and chaffinch

my 2 riverside robin pals who will (sometimes) handfeed

looks empty but look harder and spot a pair of grey wagtails

taken from the other side of the Water of Leith

grey wagtail

gathering nest materials

brown rat

wren

female blackbird with sore foot
she was managing quite well on just one leg

goldfinch

The chaffinches by the river are so unafraid. I don't think they will ever land on my hand but they let me get really close for photos. Inches away rather than yards. I can then try and zoom in till they reveal the feather structures round their eyes. They stop looking like chaffinches and like collections of miniature components miraculously assembled. 

And then I wake up at home and it was all a dream. 😁