On the Eighth Day of Christmas…
On the eighth day of Christmas, Mother Nature gave to me – a regatta of Trumpeter Swans a swimming (well, that is the venereal noun for a group of swimming swans). The only problem was that they were swimming in a flooded farm field alongside a busy rural highway so that the only location to set up the tripod for a little digiscoping was on a soft, gravel shoulder between the road and the railroad tracks. After that it was all private land separating me from the birds by a few hundred meters.
Fortunately, I was using the Swarovski 25x-50x eyepiece on my trusty spotting scope – and indeed I needed every bit of the 50x magnification it could provide (as well as all the 3x of optical zoom of which my little Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS was capable as well). However as there was a slight mist hanging in the air and a continual vibration caused by all the trucks passing only a meter or two behind me, it was still a tricky photographic situation.
While certainly not nearly of the same quality as the images of Mute Swans recently posted by Dale Forbes on the Discovering Alpine Birds blog, given the conditions under which they were recorded, I am quite satisfied with my own Trumpeter Swan images.
Equipment:
Swarovski ATS 80 HD spotting scope
Swarovski 25-50x W eyepiece
Swarovski UCA (Universal Camera Adapter)
Swarovski Carbon CT101 tripod
Canon PowerShot SD 1100 IS digital camera
holy cow John, that shot is incredible for being taken at a focal length of 5700mm!
but it does seem that one of the swans has a siamese twin attached to it (two bodies and one head), great comic moment to capture.
Happy birding!
Dale