Cranes & Geese

Sandhill Crane, Woodbridge Ecological Reserve

I left the house at 4:30 a.m., planning to greet the sunrise with the cranes. I didn't make up my mind which refuge to visit until I was well on my way to the Central Valley. The choices were Staten Island, Cosumnes River Preserve, or Woodbridge -- each of which had its own advantages. I second-guessed my choice of Woodbridge when I arrived to find very few cranes.

A farmer who'd rented out hunting blinds near the cranes stopped to chat, worried that I would scare away the birds with my camera. He thought the crane numbers were so unusually low because rice, rather than corn, had been the last field crop. Indeed, I'd hoped to once again watch the cranes play with old corn stalks during their beautiful dances.

The farmer didn't know where the masses of cranes were, but he did tell me that Staten Island was a bust. I later drove up to Cosumnes River and found it a bust there as well. My next stop was Colusa National Wildlife Refuge north of Sacramento, which was very foggy and where the Auto Tour Route was closed due to flooding. A traveler there told me that nearby Gray Lodge NWR was also closed. 

I kept heading north as far as Sacramento NWR which turned out to be excellent (geese galore! bald eagles!), then drove home via the beautiful Hwy. 16 along Cache Creek through the Capay Valley to I-505.

Peaceful Dawn with Waning Quarter Moon

I couldn't resist the great blue heron's mirrorlike reflection in the canal...

...and I was surprised when he almost instantly made a stab at something underwater (which he missed).

Sunrise in the Valley

Lunar Fly-by

Sunrise in the Fog

Tundra Swans

The cranes were mainly resting, probably looking forward to being warmed up by the rising sun.

I was watching this group of cranes with a local photographer when a car drove down the levee road behind the birds, frightening them into the air. I have to wonder if the idea that getting out of the car scares away the birds is a myth.

In any event, the local photographer and I had both been standing on the road outside our cars for quite a while without disturbing the cranes.

The morning light finally burned off the fog and created some nice light on the brightly plumed sandhill cranes resting on the valley's rich, dark soil.

Stretching the Wings

Small Group of Cranes Relaxing in a Field

Coming in for a landing, this crane was sporting a brightly colored leg band.

Landing Zone

Looking for Num-Nums

Gliding to a Landing

As the morning progressed, a few more cranes flew into view from the north, but most kept on heading south of the reserve.

It was a beautiful morning to watch the cranes.

A couple of red-winged blackbirds sang their hearts out along the side of the road.

I spotted this large flock of snow geese along the side of the road near the Colusa NWR. Thankfully there was a small pull-out that allowed me to pull over and check them out.

(Cropped section of previous image.)

Wild Turkeys in the Fog at Colusa National Wildlife Refuge

The Scavengers, Colusa NWR

Turkey Vulture

A couple of good-looking birds.

A small herd of deer was hanging out close to where I saw the turkeys.

A northern pintail stretches out his wings.

Tighter Crop

Trail in the Fog at Colusa NWR

There were no geese visible inside the refuge, but this big group was working a field right across the street.

A few white-fronted geese hung out on the edge of the group of snow geese.

A pair of snow geese dropping in to join the crowd.

You could just make out Lassen Peak from the Sacramento NWR.

The snow geese obligingly rose up en masse a couple of times due to reasons I couldn't determine.

Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge

The diving eagle leaped off his tenuous branch to land on a thicker branch nearby.

The remaining eagle commenced to call out its staccato screeching call.

Another bald eagle was hanging out by itself a little farther along the auto tour route. I'd never been able to see one up close like this before.

Snow Geese, Snow Mountain

Snow Mountain was living up to its name. That's a northern shoveler (a common visitor to Blue Heron Lake) paddling below the line of snow geese.

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Grandview Parkers

 

Nuttall's Woodpecker, Grandview Park

I'd just planned to go for a short walk around and up Grandview Park, but I brought along the Lumix just for the heck of it. I'd walked all the way around without incident, then up the stairs to take in the view near the top. It's a beautiful day, but nothing strikes my photo fancy -- until I circled the top and was about to head down the other set of stairs and go home. 

That's when I saw the first of at least three western bluebirds flycatching from various perches. And while I was at it with the bluebirds, a lesser goldfinch showed up, followed by the Nuttall's woodpecker, and finally a red-tailed hawk who glided across the sky to land on a nearby eucalyptus branch. I wished I'd brought the Z8 instead. Next time.

Hummingbird Territory

Western Bluebird on what I believe is goldenrod.

The flying insects must have been out to enjoy the spring-like weather.

Something Stuck in its Craw

Leap to a Better Perch

The lesser goldfinch was so well camouflaged that I could barely see it with my glasses off. Its back looks yellow from the side, but when its back was directly facing me it looked green and fit right in with the beach strawberry leaves in the background.

Eating Grass Seeds

The little bluebirds were quite tolerant of all the people and dogs around, but they did have their limits.

Goldenrod for the Goldfinch

I recorded some video of the white-crowned sparrow singing, but the sound was almost completely blown out by the wind.

Bouncing in the Wind

This guy allowed me to get quite close. The background is 19th Avenue.

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Z8 Shakedown Cruise

 

Ruby-crowned Kinglet in Aloe, SF Botanical Garden

I finally broke down and bought a Nikon Z8 with a 180-600mm telephoto (a very popular combo) and 1.4X teleconverter. Today I took it out for its shakedown cruise at the botanical garden where I got off to a rocky start. No matter how much I pressed the shutter release, nothing happened! 

Or so I thought. It took a minute to see that I had left the camera in "Silent Mode," which must have been the default setting. I hadn't thought much of it while setting up the camera over the last couple of days, and I hadn't even released the shutter on purpose even once until this morning's trip to the SFBG. (I didn't even have the right card reader until yesterday.)

Another default setting I used was "Normal" for image quality, which I assumed would be RAW mode, but it turned out to be JPEG. So all my shots today were done as JPEGs, which is probably a good thing since I came home after a couple of hours having fired off more than 600 frames. (Out of 634 frames, I deleted 552 in Lightroom.)

Anyway, after using the lightweight Lumix FZ-80D for so long, I was worried that the Z8 would be too heavy to hand-hold for fidgety little birds. But even though it was far heavier, it was still managable. When not in use I had it on a Waka neck strap. I'd carried it down the hill on my bike inside a Think Tank Glass Limo backpack. I'll still carry the much more portable Lumix for my daily walks and rides, but I'm looking forward to getting a lot of use out of the new Nikon otherwise. (For now I'm going to stick with my 13-year-old D800E, which is still excellent, for landscapes and macro.)

Hummingbird Feeding on Aloe Flowers

This hummer was shot at ISO 12,800! Lightroom doesn't do noise reduction on JPEG files, so this is right out of the box, so to speak. 

This cute little dark-eyed junco was singing already, although it wasn't using the species' typical bell-like chittering sound.

The song sparrow was foraging on top of the aquatic weeds on the small pond in the Children's Garden. The camera easily acquired focus on shaded subjects (unlike the Lumix).

Townsend's Warbler

The Z8 couldn't actually read my mind when my subject was behind branches, so I still had to work to capture the orange-crowned warbler.

Even though I was set on "Bird" capture, the camera easily found a squirrel's eye.

By the time I photographed this yellow-rumped warbler I had re-learned one reason for using "back-button focus" after accidentally firing off a few frames while obtaining focus by pressing the shutter half-way.

The pine siskins were back in the alder tree at the pond.

Anna's Hummingbird

The Townsend's warbler spent a fair amount of time collecting seeds in the alder as well.

Pine Siskin Eating Alder Seeds

A ruby-crowned kinglet also stopped by the alder.

I had to get home in time for other activities today, so I left before I would have otherwise, and given how many frames I had to download, that's a good thing.

Black Phoebe

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