Backyard birds

Every morning I feed the birds, it is a ritual that has become accepted by the birds and if I am late the neighbourhood is told about it - the screeching of the lorikeets can be heard for quite some distance! In an earlier jotting I showed you the lorikeets, this time I am showing some of the finches that take advantage of the free feed.

Chestnut Breasted Finches are very social little birds and always seem to be in flocks. They live by waterways and feed on seed when it has just formed - the green soft seed. So these little fellows can often be seen clinging to tall grasses and "going for their lives". However the grass seeds in this ripening state do not last for ever, so the birds have then to forage - and one flock has discovered where the pickings are very easy.

Once the noisy lorikeets have left their dish of sugar water and bread the coast is clear for the finch invasion. We actually have three different finches that are local and regular visitors but I will show you the other two another time.

Sometimes these Chestnut finches are so numerous that they are like a swarm of flies. When it it really wet I put the feed dish on the veranda floor under the roof. with so many little feet and beaks pushing and shoving the seed is scattered all around so there are seeds and finches spread all over the veranda. Since they are small enough to be held in a closed fist these little birds do look like flies when they are in those sorts of numbers!

Small birds are the "bread and butter" of larger birds and because of this are very flighty. They have become quite accustomed to our company and fly in when we are seated at the table but in the beginning would scatter in wild confusion every time anyone made any move at all. (Seeds flying everywhere!)

The lorikeets and the black and white mudlarks are birds that like to tease the little ones and one bird will swoop down and land noisily on the bird feeder to scare the finches which fly off in desperation. The lorikeet (or mudlark) will then fly off and wait for the finches to return, settle down and relax and then do it again!We are led to believe that birds do not think - well I believe they have worked out a fun way to play!

AJ

A fishing bird

Taking my camera down to through the back yard I noticed a bird sitting bravely out on a branch over the water. I know this bird as a cormorant but Colin calls it a "shag" and it can often be seen with wings held out to dry after diving for food and getting its feathers all saturated.
I was wearing a dull coloured shirt and dark pants which was fortunate. Birds can be startled by strong light coloured clothing and I have found that if you wear something neutral and move and stop and move and stop, that the birds lose sight of you. I have successfully used this technique to get close to a flock of black cockatoos and it worked this time for the Little Black Cormorant. If you would like to see another picture I took of this bird from a different position click here. I would have liked to have been able to get a bit closer but the banks of the waterway are rather steep and I didn't fancy falling in!

There is another cormorant that looks very like this one and is called the Black Cormorant, it is slightly larger but it has a lighter base to its beak and pale yellow on its throat and it is found all over the world where as the Little Black Cormorant is only found in Australia and Indonesia.

AJ

Summer, endless summer

I have just come back from a drive to one of the beach suburbs not far from home and, of course, my trusty camera came along too. It has been a beautiful day with lots of sunshine. The temperature reached 33C and the water in the ocean a very enticing 23C. So it was no surprise to find that every beach side carpark was filled to capacity and lots of cars illegally parked on the sides of the roads straddling the solid yellow lines. (Aren't they lucky there are not too many parking inspectors working on a Sunday?) It was quite difficult to negotiate the two narrow lanes of road that were left clear - they were only wide enough for small cars so when a truck, van or bus came along it was "everyone breathe in!" and squeeze over against the parked vehicles!

Using Microsoft ICE I have stitched together a panorama of the beach and the view of Surfers Paradise in the background - so you might be able to gather that I was standing on Burleigh headland with the camera.

I have cropped a part of the panorama to show part of the crowd on the beach. Those surf lifesavers would have to be very alert to keep an eye on all these swimmers. To see a larger version try this link ....click me

If you are observant you will see where the stitching program has encountered a problem with the joining of the photos. The crashing waves are a different pattern every time you press the shutter so for the waves to be even this good is impressive - I could do some cloning to make this less obvious but I have not done that so you can see that even with such a clever program there are problems.

This CAN be corrected once the pictures have been stitched (five photos make up the main panorama) and brought into Photoshop. Again, for a larger picture .... Click here

My pictures today are just for interest to show you how on January 9th 2010 the people who are holidaying here on the Gold Coast are spending their Sunday.

AJ

A large nut!

Every day I take my camera out and use it. "My camera" could be the Olympus 500E with either of the two lenses that came with the camera or it could be my son's Nikon D70S that he no longer takes away with him when he leaves home for his long distance touring. This time it was the Olympus I was playing with and marched down into the back yard to see what I could find that was interesting.

Living on and acre of land with a waterway at the bottom does give me plenty of subjects for photography. Today was no different.

Lying on the lawn that Colin had only just finished mowing was a most "ginormous" football sized pine cone.

There were two of them, I wanted Samson, my Curly Coated retriever to pose beside one of them to give an indication of the size of it but he would not sit still long enough for me to focus! So you will have to believe me when I tell you that each one is the size of a rugby ball and more than twice as heavy.

When my youngest son was travelling to Brisbane to do his apprenticeship he would park his car in the shade under the trees and catch a train from the Gold Coast to Brisbane. One day he returned to find his windscreen smashed and the bonnet of his beautiful blue commodore, his pride and joy, dinted in a couple of places. To begin with he thought it was children who had been throwing missiles at the cars but looking around he found - you got it!!! - he found a pine cone from the Bunya pine not far from his car. That would account for the green smear on the bonnet! Up to that moment he had not realised that he had been parking his car under a Bunya pine - to him it was just a shady tree among a row of shady trees!

The tree in the back yard is now quite huge - it is over 30 years old and is still growing. The trunk has split quite some way up and the tree has two main trunks now which is why it looks as if there are more than one tree in this picture. The leaves are incredibly hard and every leave has a sharp point so they are not the sort of leaves you would pick to use in floral arrangements!

AJ

Since the rain

Well the rain has eased to morning showers and as a result the neighbourhood is buzzing with the sounds of ride-on lawn mowers and the brain penetrating roar of whipper-snippers (known as strimmers in the UK) because the grass has suddenly been endowed with enough energy to grow "an inch" a day! Almost as soon as the mowers are stopped they have to be brought back into action again!

Perhaps as a result of all the rain the mangos are now filling out and ripening. Our next door neighbour came across to us before going on holidays and told us to help ourselves to the mangos on his trees so we have taken it upon ourselves to drape bags over the ripening fruit to save them from all being eaten by the fruit bats and the cockatoos.

Did I tell you about the cockatoos? They seem to be so full of energy these days! They scream and shout every morning and do somersaults in the branches of the trees. They must be onto something really good!

In the evening the raucous screeching happens again as the birds swoop around in the fading light before making off for their evening roost. I do not envy the people who have these birds roosting in their yard! I managed to take a snap of the birds between circuits last night but the quality of the shot is not particularly good because they are about two hundred metres away. I did try to take some shots as they flew directly over me but to show you only one bird does not give you any idea of the flock sizes. This group is only part of the flock that was making its departure

Incidentally the mangos are absolutely delicious and well worth making an effort to save a few!

AJ

Exaggerating a light display with Photoshop

When I wrote about the fireworks I told you that it was possible to combine two shots to make a more dramatic one. When the background is black and the fireworks are bright - white and coloured - it is easy to combine two shots.

Make sure both images are the same size to start with (makes life so much easier!) The "Select all" on one of the pictures and paste it on top of the other.

In the Layers palette change the blending mode from "Normal" to "Screen" and the black background of the top layer magically disappears and allows the image below to show through. The top image can be resized and moved to create a better balanced picture.

So that this technique can be seen more clearly I will use two images that are quite different from each other - one is of a home that has been decorated with lights for Christmas.

The second shot is of a burst of fireworks.

By copying and pasting the fireworks picture onto the decorated home picture I can make a very special display - one the home owner didn't plan!

"But", you say, "There are more firework bursts in this combination shot than in the original."

Well spotted!

Once I had pasted the fireworks onto the decorated home picture and changed the blending mode to Screen I then copied and pasted this layer and selecting the second layer I clicked Ctr + T to select Free Transform and holding down the Shift key I resized the layer so that the firework bursts were smaller - and, of course, I moved this layer over to the right so that the sky became filled with firework lights.

I hope that you are able to follow how I combined two or more shots to make a realistic new picture.

AJ

New Years Eve

The year has ended, long live the year - or words to that effect. When the televisions chanels give a potted view of the happenings of 2009 it brings home all the amazing, wonderful, frightening and magnificent things that have happened in one short year. It is so sad that yet another Australian town should be destroyed by bush fire right at the end of the year. Will the population rally to help this community of WA like they did for the people of Victoria? I don't think so. The millions raised for Victoria has not been shared equally among the people who lost homes in Victoria - people with home insurance got nothing but the no-hopers who lost caravans and shacks got $200,000 and now drive around in flash cars - but still do not have a house. This knowledge tends to make those of us who donate money less willing to do so next time - and there will always be a next time.

Last night I took my camera and tripod to our local shopping centre at Robina where once again they were to hold a firework display. For the past two years it has not been held because of the building of new extensions to the centre. Colin and I chose a place not far from the car park next to a stout pillar and just under shelter - because it was raining when we arrived. The pillar meant that the tripod would not be a problem for anyone walking past. Colin stood beside the one leg of the tripod that extended to my right so every leg was protected.

A security guy came over and gave me a few ground rules about not shooting buildings. He was very good, not aggressive or rude at all and was merely passing on information from his "boss" who, from his lookout, obviously had noticed the tripod and large camera and assumed I was a professional photographer. (Fame at last!) The security guard had a receiver plugged in his ear and was receiving instructions on what to say as he stood in front of me. Anyway, after receiving assurances from me that I was just setting my focus by using the lights of the building in readiness for the fireworks I was left alone and treated to a grin or a wave each time he walked past through the evening.

As the first firework was fired the rain stopped and everyone was able to move out from under shelter and lean against the fence on the opposite side of the road - which meant that I had no one in front of me and very few people behind me and a clear view of the fireworks as they exploded. Not long after the security guard had left me another fellow approached me and he was the trigger man for the fireworks and he was able to tell me where the explosions would happen. Because the area was not large he explained that the fireworks would not be large either. So thanks to him I knew that I was in the right place for the action.

The fireworks were fun - but as warned, nothing spectacular. There were only the standard exploding rockets and a short burst of other rockets that spray out with golden lights. Its a bit difficult to explain so here is a picture of one of the sprays.

I basically used the settings on the camera that I had experimented with earlier in the day, using the sparkler. I tried slower speeds but ended up with too much white blur in the nucleus of the explosions so dialed the speed back to 1/20 sec.

The firework display lasted only ten minutes and I managed to take 35 pictures during that time. Not all of them are impressive and in another blog I will explain how to put two or more images together to make a more impressive display. The camera may not lie but the "Photoshopper" certainly can!

AJ