Service and repair

I mentioned a 2 weeks ago that my D7000 had gone back to Nikon for repair, The dial on the back that allows you to scroll up and down images and the menu only worked in the down direction, No big deal but a bit of a pain and whilst its under guarantee then why not get it fixed, My Sigma 180mm macro also went back to Sigma as it did not work at all with the D7000
Last Friday i received a mail from Nikon stating that they received the D7000 and sent a link so that i could see where it was and what was going to happen to it, Today (Tuesday)  i see that its been shipped-once again excellent and professional service from Nikon, They have been THE best camera gear company i have ever dealt with by far
Now whats with Sigma? No confirmation of receipt of the lens or anything regarding repair/costs etc

Dave

New Garden moths (and some old)

A couple of blogs ago, I said I would bring some of the cracking little moths that I had been lucky enough to attract in the garden via the moth trap.

So here they are

 Angle Shades

 Small Magpie

 Beautiful Hook Tip

 Elephant Hawk (first one this year)

Buff Tip

I was really pleased to get this last one.  Approximately 25 mm long, with its wings at rest it aims to disguise itself as a broken birch twig.  I didn't have any birch but have use a small hazel withy as the prop for this one.

These were from last weekend when it also looks like we got another Warwickshire first.

Jac and I went for a walk round a local SSSI on Sunday morning and were thrilled to see a Humming Bird Hawk Moth.  I put my record into the Butterfly Conservation Warwickshire, and it looks like we got the first one for the County on that site this year.

Right off to watch Sprinwatch now and check out the Skomer Puffins.  Maybe I should dig out some of my archive images for those little beauties if you would like to see them

Martin

Garden Critters

It was another beautiful weekend here in North Carolina, Blue skies and very hot, Its one of the main reasons that we moved here, The problem with such intense heat is that the animals and birds spend most of the day in the shade, The dragonflies however are ever present around the pond, Namely the Common Whitetail and the Blue Dasher, The whiteteils like to spend the day on the rock in the pond and chase anything that comes near and the blue dasher likes to rest on one particular piece of tall grass that i have left there on purpose, I decided to try and get some shots of the Blue Dasher through my fence using my 200-400 with extension tubes as the macro lens is still at Sigma, It took a while as it was breezy and the dragonfly was somewhat flighty with my presence but the results were pretty good considering, Whilst i was near the pond a female common whitetail (which is brown) flew close to me and fluttered over the edge of the pond knocking her abdomen against the side depositing eggs into the pond-very cool to watch at such close quarters, I have noticed that the female likes to rest on a tree when the sun is low and i managed some shots of here there, I like the textures of the bark with the dragonfly, We now also have water boatman in the pond as well so lots of creatures using the pond both inside and out, So far apart from the birds drinking from it we have squirrel,fox,raccoon and deer using it, If you are having a problem attracting animals and birds into your garden water is by far the best way, Even a dish/bowl of water will work,
Late yesterday evening i was sitting on the patio having a cold one as you do when i noticed that a raccoon was at the feeding area, It was still light but the sun was way down, I slowly went and got the D3s with the 600 on the tripod and set up in the garden, i took a few shots through the fence and said to my wife that i thought that if i was careful i thought that i could get close enough to shoot over the 4' fence, After 5 minutes or so i was in place and took a couple of shots, I was close to the raccoon-maybe 20 feet or so but it took no notice and moved freely between the 3 areas that i put food down, I had to shoot at ISO 6400 and towards the end the light had dropped considerable and the shots were about 1 stop under exposed but the D3s is brilliant at this low light photography and the shots are very usable

Blue Dasher

Common Whitetail Female

Raccoon-ISO 6400 no noise reduction and the whole image has been sharpened which will show the grain at its worst (too lazy to selective sharpen for the blog sorry)

Click on the images to make the larger then use the back button

Dave

More 'Garden ' firsts

I set myself a challenge a couple of days ago, and that is to capture a half decent image of Swifts in flight.  The night before they were down low, screaming around the gardens and houses as they took to feed.  With a late evening light, they looked beautiful.

So the challenge was borne.  Very difficult to follow and track, but even harder to get in the viewfinder in the first place.

It was while observing the Swifts I noticed a very different shape that was obviously a bird of prey.  Kestrel, Sparrrowhawk? - both regulars over Stratford upon Avon - no to both as it was very different.

Picking it up quickly in the viewfinder, I rattled a few shots.  It was never going to be a cracking image as it was so far from the camera.

But it was great to find out that it was a Hobby.  My first locally, and for the garden.  So with the Bullfinch being no 42, it was great to tick this one off as the 43rd for this year.

As I say, not great but certainly fine enough to accurately ID.

Well with a strange Spring this year, dragon and damselfly activity has been virtually non-existent throughout May.  But we did see our first Southern Hawker of the year in the garden yesterday.  Sadly, it was in the beak of a Male Blackbird

Anyway, lots of interesting moth species still to bring, including one of the Hawk moth species that I got this morning.

Martin

Water, Dragons and Sub Conscience

Yesterday i had a tonne of stuff to finish so that i could send a submission off to my agent but as with all plans it did not work out quite how i had planned and for some reason Photoshop would not let me allow to enter the meta-data, So i decided to take a couple of hours off and go out with the Kayak and check out the ospreys nest and take a gentle paddle around the bay to see if there was anything else about, I fancy shooting a water moccasin although i am not too happy being near snakes this species kinda fascinates me, The osprey was on its nest and had its wings spread protecting the young from the sun and heat, I took a few shots but knew that the light was still harsh, i had a heron fly very close and landed its its own nest which was cool, The main thing i wanted to do was to get some time under my belt in the kayak, they are not the most stable of crafts to be shooting in and confidence is the key to success,the session was very enjoyable so i headed back, I had a pizza and beer in the garden and as i was eating i noticed something move in the hedge and upon closer inspection i could see a Green Anole (lizard) sitting in the fence, Its the first time i had seen one in the wild, It wasnt as green as i had seen in the pics in my book but it did say that they can change colour quickly and be brown, I grabbed my tripod and put the D3s and 600 on it, The front of the hedge was in shade and the sun light was behind it, I took a shot and got this

Its OK but the background light kinda over powers the subject and i wanted it a bit bigger in the frame, I had to add an extension tube to allow me to focus closer and felt that some fill light would help with the exposure

Now this is more like it and perfectly usable but i felt that the flash had under exposed the background so i lowered the shutter-speed and dialled the flash down to -1.7ev

I felt that this was a more natural look, Because the shutter speed was very low (1/30) and i was using a 600 lens i used the mirror lock up facility to stop any mirror slap and to help keep the image sharp, The subject was very relaxed which helps when adjusting exposures and flash setting and over the period of about 30 mins i had plenty of opportunities to shoot it in various positions

After the lizard had moved on i sat down and gone over the session, It came into my mind how i had first seen it, I think after all these years of shooting wildlife you are always on your guard and sub conscientiously your eyes are scanning for movement even when you do not realise then again it could have been the beer

Dave

New garden Species

As regular readers will know, I have converted two thirds of my back garden to a wildlife garden with only native UK wild plants.

Just before you go through into the wildlife garden, the more formal garden has many cottage garden plants in it.

A couple of weeks ago, we noticed a few small caterpillars on one of the new plants that we put in this year.  the plant is a Verbascum,  and this type is called 'Southern Charms' and then the word mullein is mentioned.

Now Jac and had couldn't make up our minds about what type of caterpillar it was, because my caterpillar books were non existent, as all my guides tended to focus on the moth or butterfly form.  Jac thought it was a Burnet as we had those in the garden last year, but given that I had photographed that a bit ago in this blog, I was certain it wasn't that, but didn't know otherwise. 

Well at the same time we went to the Bird Fair that I reported here, and the good folks from the Butterfly Conservation Warwickshire said 'Oh, that's a Mullein' and showed us in the book that I mentioned recently Link below.

So we bought the book and what a great reference work it is.

Now the full latin name of the species is Shargacucullia verbasci., common name Mullein.  And the plant it was on Verbascum and the word Mullein on the label !!!!

So the moral is use all the clues in front of you and you might find things out for yourself.

Anyway, we either bought the plant with the eggs on it from the nursery - quite possible, or the moth came in overnight and laid - also possible.

Now the caterpillars went from very small to quite large, about 40mm and after a while disappeared.  So either the Blackbirds got them, or hopefully they have cocooned themselves in the ground.  If the latter, then we wont see the resulting moth for up to five years.

So this is the first caterpillar that I have bought you from the garden, although it wasn't in the wildlife garden.  So we still have to break that particular 'duck'

I had a great haul from the moth trap last night, as I continue to record the creatures of the night that we get here and will bring you some different species, with a couple of crackers in future posts.

So that's enough words, here's the little beastie on the larval foodplant.

Have a great weekend

Martin

Ramblings 2

I am still stuck behind the PC processing a huge backlog of images taken over the last year, The weather is 97 so too hot to go out in the day time but i will get the Kayak out over the next couple of days, my foot is 95% better so thats at least something positive
I have been scootching around the forums and talking to some people i know and there are some strongish rumours coming from that Canon camp that things may be shaken up at the end of this year, There were also some rumours on the Canon rumour site yesterday saying things similar to what i had already heard,
Video in a Dslr is still a love/hate thing and one of the rumours was that Canon may bring out a stills camera and a video option of the stills camera, I guess that it could happen, Many years ago i bought a Canon 1V film camera, It came in 2 versions, The small IV and the large 1VHS the difference being that the 1VHS had the battery pack built in like the 1D series that we have today, Video seems to be the big selling point for todays stills camera which is ironic to say the least and Nikons latest advert on TV for the D5100 is shot purely on that camera, Video is defiantly here to stay and i would guess that if you had the chance of a Dslr with or without video you would still take the video equipped option for when you come to sell it-unless there was such a big price difference that made it worth buying without, Nikon say that there release schedule will stay the same so there should be replacements for the D300s and D3s this year and maybe a D700 replacement, i think that even if they do announce new models they will be in very short supply for a long time due to low volume production after the problems in Japan
I hope to get some photography done over the couple of day, I could really do with the Macro lens but as its at Sigma i doubt i will see that for another week or 2
My California images are now all sorted and processed so its back to the Japanese trip, Here are a couple of images from California that have never seen the outside of a hard drive
Willet up close

 Wet Whimbrel

 Red Winged Blackbird

 Marbled Godwit feeding

All images Full Frame taken with Nikon D7000

Dave

Raptor Persecution - Good ? and Bad

We have  reported on the persecution of raptors far too many times on this blog.....sadly.  Just as recently as last month, I reported this story on Hen Harriers.

Sadly across at Rutland Water, one of the Ospreys, has gone missing, feared shot.  The third breeding male in the same area in recent times.  Seems far too coincidental doesn't it.

However, I found this story of a couple of prosecutions of Scottish gamekeepers that you might wish to read.

So while it is good news that this has happened, it is still sickening, when you read the details, that this is even happening.  Why does it still keep happening?  Why does the community involved 'appear' to be in such denial.  The excuse always seem to be that it is the result of one or two 'rogue elements'.

Sadly, there appears to be too much of a patter.

Now it is easy for me to say this, being hundreds of miles away, and not close to the reality of what is happening, and just tripping out 'stories' from the press.  So I am not setting myself up here as any kind of informed expert on this.

But as an observer, it is still unacceptable that anyone involved as a guardian of nature, conservation or wildlife, or at least claims to be that this is anyway acceptable.

It would be good to see a much greater condemnation from the majority of the law abiding community who have an interest.

Another link here to a story that you might also be interested, with views from 'both sides'

Martin