Prairie Warblers at Ft. De Soto State Park

     The weather patterns have not been conducive to coastal sightings of migratory birds along the panhandle of Florida this year. In the absence of strong north winds, the birds are flying across the Gulf and making their first landing much further inland. Thus, using eBird hotspots to find locations where migrating songbirds were being seen, I made a 3 day birding trip to Ft. De Soto State Park near Tierra Verde, FL. The park is located on five interconnecting islands (keys) consisting of over 1000 acres with a variety of habitats (mangroves, wetlands, palm hammocks, etc). Over the next few weeks I will post some of the images I obtained during this outing. Prairie Warblers, a species noticeably absent from the galleries in my Smugmug web site, are featured in my first blog. 

The first image was taken in the late afternoon under favorable lighting conditions. The remainder were taken about 30 minutes after sunrise in shady conditions. Shooting in manual mode with auto ISO enabled, I selected a shutter setting of 1/2000 sec (recommended for geriatric photographers hand-holding the 500mm lens with the 1.4x or 1.7x teleconverter) and an aperture of f/7.1.  For all four images an ISO of 4000 (the upper limit of ISOs I allow) was auto selected. Adobe Camera Raw was used to reduce the image noise with some attendant loss of spatial resolution. Nonetheless, I was pleased to get these unobscured shots of the warblers.

I am sure unexpected problems will arise as I learn to use the blogging software. If you want to keep count, there is a subscribe button that allows the blogs to be delivered to your email directly. Or you can plot the learning curve using the links I provide on Facebook.

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David Sparks

I retired in 2005 after 40 years of research and teaching at the University of Alabama in Birmingham (24 years), the University of Pennsylvania (8 years) and the Baylor College of Medicine (8 years). Photography is my retirement hobby.

Nature photography, especially bird photography, combines a number of things that I really enjoy: bird-watching, being outdoors, photography, travel, messing about with computers, and learning new skills and concepts.  I now spend much of my time engaged in these activities.

David Sibley in the preface to The Sibley Guide to Birds wrote "Birds are beautiful, in spectacular as well as subtle ways; their colors, shapes, actions, and sounds are among the most aesthetically pleasing in nature."  My goal is to acquire images that capture the beauty and uniqueness of selected species as well as images that highlight the engaging behaviors the birds exhibit.