I was at the Manly wader roost [SEQ] the other day putting my new
camera lens through its paces. It [Sigma 80-400 OS] is a definite
improvement over the old lens, and looking at the pictures on the
screen, enabled me to see things that I didn't pick up in the field.
For example, I was photographing the gossip of tattlers that assemble
on the back of the rockwall beside the boat harbour - there were a
dozen of the locally [green] flagged tattlers among the hundreds of
birds there. On examination, in one shot, I found a blue [Japanese]
flagged tattler and an orange [Victorian] flagged Curlew Sandpiper in
the edges of a shot I took of a green flagged tattler. I certainly
didn't seen the blue and orange bands when I was looking at the birds.
I also took a quite few shots of a group of golden plovers - I found
at least one bird that was free of the spangling that characterises
golden plovers [it wasn't a Grey], which was interesting, because it
was a type of plumage that none of my field guides note.
Looking at a couple of clear flight shots [very much a matter of luck]
I also noticed a fair bit of variation in the extent to which the
plovers' feet projected beyond their tails - in some cases it appeared
to be comparable to the length of the birds' bills while it was
negligible in other cases. [This is interesting, because foot
projection is supposed to be one of the diagnostic features for
separating Pacific / American / European Golden Plovers].
Regards, Laurie.
===============================
www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com
To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to:
===============================
|
