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| p.1 #1 · Blue-headed Vireo in Los Angeles, and Another... | |
First off, apologies for being scarce here lately. I've been Out and About with the 7D/500 f4/BushHawk, either solo or with "birder" friends, and we've been having quite a time here in southern California. Add to that my ongoing plans for retirement from Kaiser in May of this year, and the accompanying "downsizing" (i.e., getting rid of a lot of "stuff") and, well, just planning on what I'll be doing for the 3 years I'll be On the Road with Discovery (my Lance 1685 travel trailer) -- and STILL working -- it doesn't leave much time left over. But here are a few things...First, the Blue-headed Vireo. While on a birdwalk at Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park here in Harbor City, my friend Steve Dexter, a veteran birder, saw movement in a tree, lifted his binocs then said "Blue-headed Vireo!" Now, you don't hear that AT ALL west of the Rocky Mountains; the BHVI is an eastern bird. And there have only been 2 records here in California of a wintering BHVI (Point Loma in San Diego County), and that was the same bird that returned. So this is a VERY special bird. As I was there on the birdwalk, I took the first photos of the bird, and once the birding world here saw them, they knew it wasn't a Cassin's Vireo, which comes through here on migration and looks somewhat similar. It's WAY too bright and contrasty; the Cassin's is duller and sort of "washed out", with no clear delineation of the colors. This bird was meant to be SEEN; it's, well, a striking-looking bird. Kimball Garrett, the pre-eminent bird authority here in Los Angeles, refrained from making a positive ID, even after looking at my photos, but when he saw it in-the-field, he knew it could only be a Blue-headed Vireo, and said so. So I'll be sending my photos to the California Rare Birds Committee for documentation of the sighting. Oh and yes, there's the juvenile Yellow-crowned Night Heron at Bolsa Chica that my "wunderkid" (he's 16) birder friend Jose Sandoval and I saw 2 weeks ago -- another Life Bird for both of us. It's nice to be able to put my camera rig to good use for these rare-for-the-area birds. All shot in RAW, adjusted and converted to JPEG in Canon DPP, then tweaked a bit in Paint Shop Pro X3. I'll try to be here a bit more often... 
Best Wishes,
Steve
 © trailhiker 2012
Blue-headed Vireo 1
Canon EOS 7D 500 mm f/4.5 1/200 sec 200 ISO 0.0 EV
 © trailhiker 2012
Blue-headed Vireo 2
Canon EOS 7D 500 mm f/4.5 1/200 sec 200 ISO 0.0 EV
 © trailhiker 2012
Blue-headed Vireo 3
Canon EOS 7D 500 mm f/4.5 1/400 sec 200 ISO 0.0 EV
 © trailhiker 2012
Juvenile Yellow-crowned Night Heron
Canon EOS 7D 500 mm f/8.0 1/1600 sec 200 ISO 0.0 EV
 © trailhiker 2012
Juvie Yellow-crowned Night Heron and Adult Black-crowned Night Heron
Canon EOS 7D 500 mm f/7.1 1/400 sec 100 ISO +0.7 EV
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