Conowingo Dam 2016

Well, it's that time of year again... We've had a string of beautiful Autumn days and the eagle migration is on. I made two trips last week, arriving both times before sunrise, only to find at least 50 photographers already there. By the time I left, cars were parked in every spot and on the side of the road going up the hill at the exit. Split among the two days, I got some keepers.

First, let's look at the crowd and the gear.

The Crowd Awaits

How Much Money?

Here's a flyover from the first trip, a nearly-mature eagle with a fish. I like the mottled colors, dark tips of the tail feathers, fish, and light shining through.

Light Shining Through Tail Feathers

Here's one where the eagle has just plunged its talons into the water.

Aaaand Strike!

Here's a shot in dawn sunlight with a bloody fish.

Bloody Fish

I got lots of shots of flying eagles with fish. But this year I seem to like the shots where the eagle is just at the moment of striking.

Fish In Danger

Got It

Maneuvering for the Strike

Got It

About to Strike

Taking a Look at the Victim

On the Way to a Tree for Lunch

This year I did some experimentation, using manual exposure, changing settings during the day, being much more selective in the shots that I take. It was a lot of fun, especially with the numerous chances to watch mid-air bird fights. Sadly they were all too far away to shoot, but it was entertaining.

Maine Loons

I recently made my annual trip to Maine for vacation. I've had a whole year to look at my last batch of loon photos, and I went with the goal of capturing more action. I mean, how many shots of loons serenely swimming can I stand?

Obligatory Serene Profile Shot

If there was action, especially water flying, I wanted to shoot it. I got lucky a few times with loons popping up near my kayak. The close proximity and bright morning sunlight let me get some shots suitable for close crops. This one included water streaming from the beak, a deep red eye, lines of beaded water on the head, and texture in that furry head.

Dripping After a Dive

In the summer, adults have their breeding plumage, but underneath those feathers, they are brown. You can only see the brown (down?) when they lift their wings.

Showing the Colors

They float along socializing or fishing. Fishing means sticking the head in the water, and if they spot prey, they dive. The head-in-water thrust is often vigorous.

Looking for Prey

After surfacing, they sometimes spread their wings and shake the water out. This reveals the white underfeathers and white bellies.

Wing Spreading

I saw this display a few times. The loon was among several other loons, suddenly got very loud, stood up, and started splashing.

Puffing that Chest Out

Here's another close crop from a loon that popped up from a dive near the kayak.

Checking Me Out After Surfacing from a Dive

There was one juvenile. Its parents were frequently absent from this youngster, off fishing I guess. I encountered it several times, with and without parents present.

Mom and Junior

I have no idea how that juvenile could eat this fish that is larger than the bird's neck. But eat the fish it did.

Breakfast!

And here's my favorite of the trip.

Shake it Out!

I'll finish with some poor photos, but I'm including them because I like the action in them and I was unable to get anything better...

These birds were made to swim. Flight is not their strength. Here's a shot of a loon that I saw passing overhead, it circled, and landed. The huge webbed feet are hanging out there.

Loon in Flight

Loon takeoffs are excruciatingly long as they swim and flap to gain speed and then they eventually lift off, but have to keep paddling and flapping until they clear the water.

"I THINK I CAN FLY"

Landing is even more comical. They glide over the water, feet dangling behind, neck outstretched, until they touch down and ski/skip over the water until they slow down.

Touching Down

Overall, I had a lot of fun. I went out every morning before 7AM, sometimes catching them in their morning gathering. On my last morning there, I found a group of five, which then merged with a group of four. They never grouped together in a way that allowed me to get a shot of all nine, so I have nothing to show for it. They annoyingly neglected to do any real interactions, no splashing or other displays. Adding the juvenile, I saw ten loons that morning, and that's my single-day record.

OBNWR

After weeks of bad weekend weather, we have extraordinarily beautiful and cool weather for June. I went to the wildlife refuge this morning.

The ospreys were busy fishing and nesting, but most of the action was out of range. I did get this shot though.

An Osprey Unhappy with my Presence

There were fleeting chances to get shots of bald eagles, like this one.

Bald Eagle

 Near the shoreline nest, I got this one shot before the eagle flew away.

Bald Eagle

In the tree with the nest, there are two juveniles who look to be branching, not quite fledged. With the dense vegetation in the way, it was very difficult to get a clear look at them, and this was the best I could do.

Two Juvenile Bald Eagles

 I walked further, rounded a bend, and saw a hen turkey with a whole brood on the road. I thought, maybe I'd have a chance to shoot the young ones; I've never seen any young turkeys. I got some quick shots, but it was too dark and I was too rushed, and the shots are poor. I thought, well at least they can't fly away yet. Then they all flew away. The only usable shots I got were of the mother, who flew into a tree and precariously perched for a minute while I found a spot to get a shot.

Wild Turkey

 I usually let herons go their way without photographing them. This one was so close that I shot it anyway. Its eyes look bizarre because they are both looking at me.

Heron with Odd Eyes

 On my way back out, I passed the shoreline nest again. Again, after lots of looking for a spot to get a clear shot, I found them with a bit more sunlight on them.

Two Juvenile Bald Eagles

 I headed for the exit, looking up for birds. I almost stepped on this large turtle. At last, here was an animal with an unobstructed view that was still enough for me to shoot. It was actually so close that it was hard to shoot it with my telephoto lens. Moving farther away in a direction that was well-oriented to the turtle and the light put me off the road in the bushes. Its shell was about the size of a basketball.

Plane Spotting

My son had practice in DC and I had a few hours to kill, so I went to Gravelly Point for some plane spotting. I found a spot at a table in the shade and fired away with the camera. Here are some of the shots.

Bombardier Dash 8

Canadair CRJ

Boeing 737

McDonnell Douglas MD-90

There was an FAA jet making a series of low passes over the airport and Pentagon.

FAA Learjet 60

PC Update

Last year I assembled a PC from parts. Here's an update.

First, I've been very happy with it. Some notes about it are:

• I neglected to mention in my original post that I had trouble getting it to start when I first assembled it. The motherboard has no speaker, and I heard no beeps to indicate what the trouble was (power supply cables not seated properly). I wound up ordering a speaker and I'm glad to have it because now the beep on startup is reassuring.
• I added 16GB RAM so now I have the full 32GB on board. Lightroom, Photoshop, and VMs are all memory-hungry and I can say that I have never noticed the system even approaching full memory usage.
• Hyper-V works, but I find it awkward to use, with clumsy interfaces. And it's difficult to use external storage. To be fair, it has worked reliably, but I've had to work around some of its limited features. I regularly use Windows XP, Windows 10, and Linux VMs, sometimes running simultaneously.
• Windows 10 has been rock solid.
• I decided to avoid Seagate disks from now on. I've had two disks fail in the last year (not in this new machine) and both were Seagate models.

When I first assembled it, I used a 150GB disk that I had lying around as the Windows disk, i.e. C:. I knew I'd need to replace it before much time passed because it's old (but infrequently used). I've come to really rely on the machine now and I fear this disk is a weak link.

I did some research on my options for replacement. First, I didn't want to reinstall Windows, and I found several tools that do cloning. I settled on a tool from Acronis, mainly because it has good reviews and there's a free version available to users of Western Digital disks. I attached a spare disk, did a test clone, and decided that this was the way to go.

I want some reliability with this machine. Then I pondered the idea of doing disk mirroring of my C: disk. I have the room in the case and even a couple of spare disks, but I kept looking for options. I've avoided solid state disks so far because of the cost per GB. But the cost has come way down, and I found a nicely-priced 240GB model from Samsung. It has good reviews, is bigger than the disk it would replace, and it has no moving parts so it should last a while.

And that's why I'm writing this. I bought the SSD, cloned my original system disk onto it, disconnected the original disk from power and data (this is my recovery option in case the SSD or the cloning process failed), and when I restarted the machine, it booted from the SSD as if there had been no change.

Next time I open the case I'll remove that old 150GB HDD. Maybe I'll replace it with an HDD with higher capacity. I know the SSD can fail just like an HDD, but with no moving parts in the SSD I'm hoping for high reliability, especially given the fact that I'm not installing much software and no data (I put data on other disks). The only recurring writes I'm expecting are OS updates and paging, and of course I have so much RAM that even paging should be rare.

Also, the new disk is pretty small, smaller than a smart phone, and very light. Presuming it lasts, I'm sold on SSDs. They're still too expensive for high capacity, but for an OS disk, I like it.

OBNWR Menagerie

I've made several trips to OBNWR in this string of amazingly beautiful Spring days. Here are some highlights.

Juvenile Bald Eagle

Meeting in the Nest

Head Cocked to the Side

Osprey on the Nest

Fetching Material for the Nest

Leaving the Nest

I heard this turkey before I saw it. When I saw it, it had its rear to me with the feathers all spread out. I waited for it to turn, and it put its feathers down and walked into the woods, not giving me a chance for a better look at its head. It was in dark shade, and I only just had time to adjust the camera before it disappeared.

Very Colorful Wild Turkey

 This woodpecker is banded.

Woodpecker

OBNWR

It was a tough week (I resigned from my job of 16 years) and I needed to unwind after work on Friday. I grabbed my camera and went to the refuge for a walk in the late afternoon sunlight.

There wasn't much action. The eagles were no longer hanging out in the grove by the shore. Only the eagles at the nests were visible, and the occasional osprey flew by.

I did observe two eagles harassing each other, but they were too high for anything usable. However, one of them did drift lower for a minute, and I was in a good position for clear, if small, shots. The shots aren't really usable, and I knew that at the time and didn't take many. I've been observing eagles for a few years now, and I've noticed that they usually keep their talons tucked under their tail feathers. The talons come out when harassing another bird in the air, landing, or snatching a fish. I was surprised to notice that the eagle that drifted lower had its talons out, with no other bird nearby. Then I was glad that I wasn't all that close after all.

Look Out Below

I had a few fly-by events, along with a (barely) keeper on a nest. And here they are.

Hovering and Fishing

Looking for Fish

Fly-By

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