Black capped chickadee ??

[darren]

Here are some shots of what I think are black capped chickadees. Someone on another forum said that he thinks they are carolina chickadees. Not sure I agree and my mother took her guide book back, so I can't check.

Canon 20D
Canon 100-400 IS L
ISO 800, f 7.1 or 8, ~1/250 sec

So, am I right? Black capped? It's the Mass state bird, so I should know these things I guess.

Thanks

- darren

 

[Papa Bear]

Here are some shots of what I think are black capped chickadees. Someone on another forum said that he thinks they are carolina chickadees. Not sure I agree and my mother took her guide book back, so I can't check.

Canon 20D
Canon 100-400 IS L
ISO 800, f 7.1 or 8, ~1/250 sec

So, am I right? Black capped? It's the Mass state bird, so I should know these things I guess.

Thanks

- darren

From Peterson (the Bible):
"Carolina Chickadee: Nearly identical to the Blacked-capped Chickadee, but distinctly smaller and lacking the conspicuous white areas in the wing ..."

You got the "conspicuous white areas in the wing" so you got a Black-capped.

Also it would help to know where the bird was seen. The ranges are fairly distinct, although they do overlap. Carolina in basically a southern bird found mostly east of the Mississippi, Black-capped a northern bird found both east and west.

 

[bikehikeskifish]

I like the light and eye of #3 and the pose (perch) of #2. #1 is missing that eye twinkle, and next to the other two looks less alive. #2 seems to say "Take the photo quickly, before I fly away." #3 has the best depth-of-field -- the entire bird looks to be in focus, probably because of the availability of the light.

Tim

 

[nartreb]

A selection of online bird guides confirm that Papa Bear is right on the money. (Edit: make that "Peterson is right on the money" -no surprises there.) The species are similar (and can hybridize), but north of, say, New Jersey, seeing a Carolina is unlikely. The white marks on the wings confirm that this is a black-cap.
In the Northeast (especially the more northerly mountains) you may also see Boreal Chickadees, which are similar to black-capped but generally browner; in particular the top of the head fades to brown rather than being pure black.

The black-capped chickadee is the state bird of Maine as well as of Mass. (Still more original than the six states who picked the Western Meadowlark, I guess.)

(All my chickadee expertise was aquired very recently when I photographed what I though was a black-cap and coincidentally learned later - through VFTT in fact - that it was a boreal.)

 

[Mark Schaefer]

Very nice portraits. I am constantly amazed at how well this backyard setup works.

I am going to have to work on something for my backyard, but unfortunately I don't have any conifers at present for winter photos.

The other problem is that I would have a southern exposure which might be backlit much of the time, though the side lighting early and late might be OK.

Maybe I can work up some fill light reflectors.

The other thing that amazes me is how the ASA can be cranked up with digital cameras, while maintaining good color. High speed films have never been as good as these high ASA digital photos. I have got to go digital this year for sure.

 

[darren]

Thank you for all the help. Now that I read up on it, you guys are right - which means I was right.

Mark - I've been meaning to take some shots of my setup in case someone is interested. I'll try to get it done. The feeder is on the NE corner of the house, so it is shaded for most of the day. It keeps it out of the harsh light. I could really use a flash unit for some fill flash. Not sure how the birds would respond to a flash going off only 10' away though.

As for shooting high speed, I am amazed at how well the digital camera does at ISO 800. I would never have even bothered to shoot with 800 speed film.

You should go to digital just for the cost savings. My DSLR paid for itself in no time just by saving me the cost of slide film and processing.

- darren

 

[DougPaul]

You should go to digital just for the cost savings. My DSLR paid for itself in no time just by saving me the cost of slide film and processing.

Don't forget to factor in the cost of disk space...

My DSLR has certainly brought back a lot of the fun... I can take a bunch of pics and be fooling around with them on the computer in a few minutes.

eg: http://mysite.verizon.net/dbpwebjunk/misc/moon-344-1.jpg

Doug

 

[Papa Bear]

Don't forget to factor in the cost of disk space...

...

Doug

Disk space is NOTHING compared to film cost. With 300 Gbytes (such as on my recent purchase of a computer) typical with a cost approaching $1 per Gig and going down, I consider it practically free. Moore's law. Love it.

 

[DougPaul]

Disk space is NOTHING compared to film cost. With 300 Gbytes (such as on my recent purchase of a computer) typical with a cost approaching $1 per Gig and going down, I consider it practically free. Moore's law. Love it.

Oh, I know. 35mm slides are somewhere around 50 cents a shot. If I shoot raw+JPEG, it is 15+MB per shot.

Actually, disks can be more like $.29/GB (320GB), $.34/GB (500GB) or $.44/GB (750GB). I get them in pairs (1 primary and 1 backup), so double the costs for me.

My problem is that my disks were almost full before I got the camera... (I have 360GB (x2 for backup) on the machine. Need to buy more soon.)

Doug

 

[darren]

When I shot film, I would shoot Fuji Velvia slide film and it would cost me about $18 a roll for film and processing, so $18/36 = $0.50 per shot like DP says.

DP says raw+jpg = 15MB/shot (about 10MB on my 20D), so about $0.004 per digital shot according to DP's numbers.

So.....shooting quality slide film is about 125 X more expensive than shooting digital. Not factoring the camera body cost of course.

I would easily shoot $300 - $450 worth of pictures per trip, so my dSLR paid for itself in a couple of trips.

- darren