Congratulations to Karl Witt for winning Feature Thread of the Week with 3 votes - View Previous Winners
I am fortunate to have Magee Marsh about an hour away. These are from my second visit this season, the first being rather slow for me.
Shooting here is a great challenge, can be quite frustrating at times but always fun These birds are small! The boardwalk gets crowded especially when something great is spotted. You are surrounded side by side and in front and behind trying to look through the canopy of tangles of branches and foliage and get the warbler in light-focus-pose mode. It doesn't always happen, they will come right to you at MFD and you have no where to go ......... you don't give up you just make adjustments or try to work your way to where you think the bird is going next All are significant crops here as well.
There will be many OOF shots, there will be high ISO, there will be plenty of shots where the bird 'was' and then there will be a handful of rewards hopefully to appreciate! So here are a few to that I appreciated, there will be follow up posts to this but these are my picks for the 'first round'.
C&C always encouraged and appreciated, thank you all.
Karl
Karl Witt 2025
1 Canada Warbler
ILCE-7RM3FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS lens600mmf/6.31/640s4000 ISO0.0 EV
Karl Witt 2025
2 Cape May
ILCE-7RM3FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS lens600mmf/7.11/800s2000 ISO+1.7 EV
Karl Witt 2025
3 Northern Parula
ILCE-7RM3FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS lens600mmf/8.01/1250s5000 ISO+1.3 EV
Karl Witt 2025
4 Magnolia
ILCE-7RM3FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS lens376mmf/7.11/800s1600 ISO+1.0 EV
Karl Witt 2025
5 Bay Breasted
ILCE-7RM3FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS lens600mmf/8.01/640s4000 ISO+1.0 EV
Karl Witt 2025
6 Prothonotary
ILCE-7RM3FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS lens600mmf/7.11/800s640 ISO+0.3 EV
Karl Witt 2025
7 American Redstart
ILCE-7RM3FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS lens600mmf/7.11/800s2000 ISO+1.7 EV
Karl Witt 2025
8 Black and White
ILCE-7RM3FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS lens600mmf/8.01/1250s5000 ISO+0.3 EV
Karl Witt 2025
9 Red eyed Vireo
ILCE-7RM3FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS lens600mmf/7.11/500s2000 ISO+1.0 EV
Al Trujillo wrote:
Gosh, those are nice!! So what makes Magee Marsh so popular? I recently learned about it and saw the crowds on the boardwalk.
Hi Al. Migration stop over on the shore of Lake Erie. Here is a link, https://www.bsbo.org/timing-of-spring-migration.html
Is know as the Black Swamp area, lots of history about this location too.
People come here from all over the world! Amazing concentration of migratory birds to see
Thank much Al
Karl
Beautiful job, Karl. Can't wait to see more from your session. I did not make it out this year to Magee Marsh, but it appears that vegetation may have "leafed" out earlier this year than normal?
pbraymond wrote:
Beautiful job, Karl. Can't wait to see more from your session. I did not make it out this year to Magee Marsh, but it appears that vegetation may have "leafed" out earlier this year than normal?
Thank you kindly Ray. Yes the vegetation was well advanced from other years. Lots and lots of green reflected light to work with in processing. Likely the birds felt more comfortable and were laughing at us trying to get their pics
Karl
These are beautiful! Nice work on all of these. One of these years I'll make it out there for spring migration. We get most of those warblers moving through here, but never in those concentrations, and usually hopping around behind leaves 50 feet up in the trees!
Karl Witt wrote:
Thank you kindly Ray. Yes the vegetation was well advanced from other years. Lots and lots of green reflected light to work with in processing. Likely the birds felt more comfortable and were laughing at us trying to get their pics
Karl
Might have made shooting and processing more difficult, but I like the results much better than out of focus twigs and branches.
You got some great "active" poses out of these little guys that show their personality while perched, yet appear to be on the move just the same, nice work Karl!
PS: I also note you are getting some great output out of the RIII... I am guessing you are more inclined to enjoy the low noise floor over the extra pixels? Either way, hard to argue with the results.
Great set of images, Karl. The vegetation makes it harder to spot and photograph these little birds, but it also adds beautiful colours and soft light to the shots. I really enjoy Warbler season, even though I only got out a few times this year.
douter wrote:
Thanks Karl, again this year, I will be unable to make the trip, you've brought MaGee to me!
Douglas
Start making plans for next year Plan for a couple of days, you never know how it will be on any given day.
Thanks Douglas, glad I could server you some of Magee's variety!
Karl
These birds are small! The boardwalk gets crowded especially when something great is spotted. You are surrounded side by side and in front and behind trying to look through the canopy of tangles of branches and foliage and get the warbler in light-focus-pose mode. It doesn't always happen, they will come right to you at MFD and you have no where to go ......... you don't give up you just make adjustments or try to work your way to where you think the bird is going next
All are significant crops here as well.
Plan for a couple of days, you never know how it will be on any given day.