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Sunday was shaping up to be an even better day than Saturday so we decided to slack on the chores and go out shooting pictures again.
I had been hearing a bit about the West 11th Street Park and figured we could go there and at least have a look around. In one of the reports I had heard on NPR they indicated the park had some interesting wildlife.
When we got there, it really didn’t look all that interesting. In fact, we were about to just drive on past it and look for something else when we noticed three ladies coming out of the park toting binoculars. I decided to swing around and ask them if there was any interesting birds in the park. All three exclaimed that yes indeed, there was all manner of Woodpeckers, Hawks and even a Great Horned Owl in that park. They offered to show us the Horned Owl as they had just come from where he was nesting.
The ladies took us down the path and into the woods and we came to the base of a stand of trees. They pointed to the sky and described where in the top of a very tall tree the owl could be seen. Cynthia and I craned our heads skyward and peered into the trees but could see nothing.
After about 5 minutes of explaining which branch off of which tree and so on and so forth Cynthia finally exclaimed that she could see the owl. A minute later I spotted him as well.
Time to see what the new 300mm zoom lens can do.
This was shot a the full 300mm handheld. That is to say, no tripod.
You gotta love image stabilization.
We admired the owl for awhile and then set off to explore the park.
The next creature we encountered was a hawk.
You could see him flying in circles high above the tops of the trees.
SUPER TELEPHOTO XPEALADOSSHAS!
Again, totally handheld. Amazing.
That allowed me to crop this out:
Even more amazing was the shot Cynthia got with her Pentax with the 320mm telephoto:
And from that we were able to extract this:
What a wonderful couple of sightings!
As we were leaving we heard the familiar tak-tak-tak sound, indicating that a woodpecker was nearby.
Looked up and sure enough, there he was!
We left the park and headed home. But before calling it quits we had one more stop.
If you get off the main bike trail and onto some of the footpaths you can really have some cool creature moments. I found this Egret hunting fish in a small pond:
It was a great weekend for taking pictures!
West 11th Street Park is only about 10 blocks from my house. it’s a great place to go for a walk and take some pictures.
I knew I liked you guys for some reason!! Great bird shots… holy cow 🙂 Makes me want to call a bird watch day….
I remember my 300mm fondly. And that was pre-stabilization technology. I’m certainly jealous!
What beautiful photos! West 11th Street Park has a website and is in the midst of a fund-raising drive. There is still a chance that part of the park will be developed. Is there any chance the website could use your photos or create a link to the wonderful images? If you check the website (http://www.west11thstreetpark.org/index.htm), you will see that your images blow away the ones of birds that are currently there. Yours have such detail and crispness — and were taken at such great distances!
Magnificent!
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