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Boreal chickadee
There is a place about 1hr from where I live where this specie is listed as common. It took me _7_ visits before I actually encountered/heard one. Bad luck on me I guess. But finally, this is another nemesis specie down on my list.
Canon 60D, 100-400 @ 190mm. f/5. ISO 800, 1/1000. 580 Ex with Better Beamer @ EV -2 1/3. Crop is 93% of the original since I cropped to remove an annoying white spot on the upper left corner. Exposure, saturation and contrast adjustments in LR4, NR on the background and USM (radius 1.3, 50%) in CS5.
Comments and suggestions welcome and appreciated as usual.
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Lifetime Member
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Hi P.-A. They are very tough! I've only ever seen one come to a feeder. I love the beautiful rich colours in the image and Marina has improved the crop. You could even go tighter on the subject if the IQ allowed.
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BPN Viewer
P-A,
Good advise above,..beautiful baby,.. might put more zoom in especially at f/5,...to grab detail and assuming you were over 20 feet from subject by leveraging the BB? Shots like the are impressive and always need detail, well lit eye and clean background to go over the top. The main issue here is the bottom right hand corner - you are on the right trace by cropping and cloning,..keep em coming!
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What a cute little bird! Agree with everything that's already been said and also like a crop along the lines Marina did. Thanks for posting this. I've never seen one.
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Marina: Thanks. I definitely prefer your crop to mine. I really need to develop a better eye for this.
John: Interesting that you mention this because I noticed the following. When the Boreal arrived, I was giving away a few sunflower seeds to the black-cappeds and nuthatches that were around. These species seem to be quite addicted to these seeds! However the boreal, although it did came in to the ground to grab a few seeds, seemed to prefer hanging around a few feet away, feeding from stuff fallen from the conifer trees around. Not enough specimen to draw a scientific conclusion, but maybe this specie is just not as interested in feeders and seeds as its black-capped cousin.
Jeff: I wish I had this much magnification at 190mm 20 feet away! Its been a few of my images for which you raise some points regarding the use of flash and BB. In fact, there is always something I dislike a bit about my images taken with flash but I'm never able to put the finger on what the problem is. I have to admit that what I do is pretty much set the flash to Ev somewhere in the -3 to -2 range in ETTL and hope that something good occurs. I guess I might be missing something here. If you have any pointers in this department, feel free to share! I would highly appreciate it and I'm pretty sure other novices in the flash department would enjoy as well.
Jeannean: One of the few advantages of living up North! And even then, it took me quite a while before I managed to finally see one.
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While at it, here is a repost. Mostly inspired by Marina's crop, but much tighter than the OP. This crop is about 65% of the original.
Considering I was at 190mm out of a possible 400, I really need to learn to react faster on the zoom, and be less afraid of having the bird too tight in the frame. I guess I unconsciously try to leave some room for cropping. Bad habit I need to get rid of.
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Hi P-A, I have Boreals resident in my area and as you describe they move around with the Black-cappeds but rarely come in for seeds. They do like suet though so that can facilitate attracting them to a feeding station. For some inexplicable reason my current crop of Boreals won't land on the suet but rather hop around in the snow piking up pieces chipped off by the other birds. You did good with your effort. Nice sharp, unobstructed capture and lichens always help.
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Now here's a bird I would love to see. I liked the original and really like the re-post. Yes, in the heat of the moment, one can forget to zoom!
