Credit for this one – at least, part one – goes to The Girlfriend, who was the first to spot and photograph it three days ago, but it wasn’t until yesterday that I was successful myself. I was out specifically to pick an Estate Find, hopefully this one. and wasn’t having a lot of luck – I was on my way back when I caught movement at the pond edge. Visibility was horrendous, and it took a bit of careful sidling to even get the first shots.
A green heron (Butorides virescens) naturally, the first for the year and the first on Walkabout Estates – but this needs a qualifier. During the property inspection, I spotted one, not at all surprised because the pond is ideal for them, but it wasn’t ours then. And I’ve been waiting to see when they might return, since it’s about the same time of the year as I was first finding them at the old neighborhood pond – they seem to migrate in rather late, for some reason. I would put this down to breeding elsewhere and then migrating in afterward, except that I had witnessed a few new broods and fledglings at that pond, so it doesn’t seem to be the case.
To say that I was having a hell of a time trying to obtain a clear shot is putting it mildly; while the heron was on the pond edge, I was inland several meters with countless bamboo plants, vines, and whatnot in between, and I would shift sideways to clear some only for more to obscure my view. Meanwhile, the heron is right there and I’m endeavoring not to spook it before I get my portraits.
I was sticking to manual focus, because AF would have simply tried to nail the leaves in-between us; this one is tinted green mostly by shooting past/through too many leaves, but likely also has some help from the fact that everything in the immediate vicinity was green, and this was the light that was getting reflected onto the heron. Meanwhile, it is now suspicious that someone is watching it, and moments after this, it flew a short distance off to another edge of the pond – not far enough, though.
Even though I was now clear of the damn foliage, this frame was still a bit too green from the duckweed-reflected light, and so I tweaked it back to neutral. In direct sunlight, green herons actually look closer to dark slate blue as their base color, but in shadow (where they tend to hunt,) it appears like shadowed green foliage, and works very well.
Now, this is also an ideal habitat for a nest, so we’ll just have to see what happens. Fingers crossed, offerings made to the minor deities and all that…
Later that afternoon, I got part two. Sitting in Walkabout Studios with the door to the outside open, I heard the derisive call and slipped outside with the long lens, locating my subject surprisingly quickly, but even more surprising was how many frames I managed to get.
Not my day for obscuring foliage, was it? This is full-frame and my initial view, a pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) foraging exuberantly on a dead limb. Again, manual focus was engaged and I started creeping forward, knowing that at any second I’d be spotted and the woodpecker would take flight because while the woodpecker was in deep shadow, I was out in the middle of the sunlit yard. Still, I could improve my vantage.
Slightly better, and a hint of the markings, but not good enough.
Now we have enough of a view for two observations: that this was a female, and that it likely was a juvenile, this year’s brood, determined by the lanky proportions and faintly threadbare appearance along the neck. I also made a mistake that it took me too long to recognize, because while I had dialed in exposure compensation for the bright sky in the background, I was forgetting that the woodpecker was itself in deep shadow, and the compensation should have been twice what I was using (so, 2 stops overexposed instead of the 1 full stop that I’d set.) Silly me, and I tweaked this slightly afterward, but the shadow detail simply hadn’t been captured and so I didn’t try pushing it too far and making it look weird. Yes, I’d thought to try and get to the sunny side of the woodpecker, but that would have required being several meters out into the pond – it wasn’t happening.
I also had to once again adjust for the green light, the cypress needles and grape leaves surrounding the woodpecker were what was illuminating the shadowed side. And at this point, the woodpecker is now suspicious of this guy down below.
Couldn’t pass on featuring this one, even though, with the eyes set on either side of the skull, most birds can be looking directly at you with only one eye while their beak is pointing off to the side – we just assume that this kind of perspective now means that it’s looking right at us. Maybe yes, maybe no, but birds typically don’t need the binocular vision to determine if danger’s present; that’s usually saved for hunting instead, where the depth perception is crucial.
But there you go: one targeted Estate Find, and one happenstance. I can dig it.