Saying Hello To The Nikon D7200

The D7000 and I have been together for a long time. Here is a Green-winged Teal back from our early days together, when everything was fresh and exciting and we were still exploring each other's bodies...er, when I was exploring the D7000 camera body. Cropped and color corrected, 1/800, F6.3, ISO 900. Photographed at Radio Road, San Mateo County.

I've said it in this space over and over and over again...I am not a photographer. Have never claimed to be. I do, however, take photos. Get it?

Some of you do, and that is all I can ask for. With that major disclaimer on the table, I have to mention that I do actually put in some occasional effort to take good photos...BB&B has hosted a large number of photos over the years, and hopefully they are only cringe-worthy every now and then (vagues). I rarely go birding with photography as my primary goal, but let's be real, having good photo ops adds to the quality of any birding experience if you are the sort who likes to carry a camera around.

I do get asked about camera gear, techniques, etc. from time to time, and now that I have a new camera, I thought it was time for the rare (first ever?) BB&B gear post. This isn't going to be super in depth, but it will hopefully be informative for a few readers who are thinking about upgrading their camera, or getting their very first.

For a number of years I have been using the Nikon D7000 (first released in 2010), which has been fine, though not amazing. The vast majority of content you have seen on BB&B for the last four years or so has been shot with that. It has been solid, performing well in low light compared to what I was using previously (the Nikon D90), though I have had some noticeable focus point issues the last couple of years that I'm sure are more the camera's fault than the lens I use. These problems were encountered both with birds in flight and birds out in the wide open, i.e. on the water or mudflats. Now it's no mystery to me why a camera can struggle with knowing where exactly it should be focusing for a sandpiper strolling through the muck 300 feet away, but a big Buteo soaring 300 feet away in good light should not be a challenge for a camera to figure out, you feel me? It won't be a crush, at least with a 400mm lens, but I expect sharp images at least.

The D7000 has never had difficulty figuring out what to do with anything in true crushing distance though, like this California Ground Squirrel surveying its domain. Unedited. 1/1000, F7.1, ISO 800. By the way I rarely post full size images to the blog, but this time they all are; double click on any photo to see it full size/high resoultion if interested. Photographed at Rancho de Bastardos.

Good chance a dirty AF sensor or contact is to blame for my D7000 problems, but now figuring it out is not a top priority. I'm happy to say that this summer I have upgraded to the Nikon D7200, which was first released in 2015 (hey, I didn't say this was a cutting edge post), which is two generations newer than the D7000; the Nikon D7100 came out between the two, but it was so similar to the D7000 that I had no interest in it.

So now to the meat of this post...what is there to like about the D7200? How is the D7200 different from the D7000?

*First and foremost, it is said that the sensor is just better, plain and simple. That is my impression as well. Better sensor, better photos.

*The highest ISO the D7200 allows you to use is really, really high. No one actually wants to be shooting at a six-figure ISO...but now they can!

California Quail, cropped but otherwise unedited. 1/640, F6.3, ISO 900. This is the most confident/acclimated California Quail I have ever seen. Photographed at New Brighton State Beach, Santa Cruz County.

Tricolored and Bicolored Blackbirds. 1/5000, F5.6 ISO 400. Very slightly cropped. Kind of surprised this came out considering the low light, but I just let the camera do what it thought was best (while shooting aperature priority) and it worked. Photographed at Alviso Marina County Park, Santa Clara County; I thought the Tricoloreds were a nice find, it's not something I expect to find along the bay in July.

*With the higher ISOs come higher quality performance at higher-than-ideal ISOs. I would love to shoot at 250 all the time but that is a far cry from the reality of bird photography. Photos at high ISO with the D7200 are noticeably not as grainy as with the D7000. With the D7000, I was always hesitant to shoot above ISO 800 due to the grain factor (up to 1600 was sometimes ok if only minimal cropping was needed), but I think I will have a higher ISO ceiling (comfort zone) with the D7200.

*You have much more flexibility with your ISO sensitivity range, and I LOVE having an ISO range to shoot at instead of just shooting at a fixed ISO - this makes a huge difference in how I shoot. With the D7000, the sensitivity range went 200-400-800-1600-3200-Hi1 (whatever that is). Certainly useful but I felt like there was a lot of ground between 800-1600-3200 that was unavailable to use as a maximum ISO. And to be clear, this is just your options for setting up your sensitivity range, not what all your options are when just setting a fixed ISO. With the D7200, you instead get to set a range between 200-250-320-400-500-640-800-1000-1250-1600-2000-2500-3200-4000-5000 etc. etc. all the way up to 25600. Exactly the kind of improvement I was looking for.

Mourning Dove. Tight crop but no other edits. 1/640, F5.6, ISO 1600. The grain is there but it's really minimal compared to what I would expect from the Nikons I have previously used. Awesome. Photographed at Rancho de Bastardos.

And here is the original photo for comparison. It's not going to win any aesthetic awards, but the colors look really nice both in the background and on the bird (and since I am constantly looking at them at extremely close range, I should remind everyone Mourning Doves are actually attractive birds). I'm impressed with the photo quality considering the ISO. Significantly, the grain visible in the crop above hardly looks different from the original photo, and practically no sharpness was lost. 

*The D7200 allows you to wirelessly download images straight from your camera into your mobile device. Pretty sick if you are into social media or getting an image out of a rarity to other birders ASAP, instead of the classic back-of-camera photo that is enjoyed by nobody.

*The D7000 has a small buffer. I have not been able to field test it yet, but the buffer on the D7200 is supposed to be twice as big when shooting JPEG. That means the camera is able to handle shooting a large number of pictures in a short period of time without becoming a temporarily useless hunk of plastic while it processes the photos you just took. The small D7000 buffer was absolutely killing me one day in Texas this spring while warblers were flopping around on the ground mere feet in front of me...there was some serious crushing going on, but how many crushes were missed? I don't think I even want to know.

*Another upgrade with the D7200 I have not gotten to experience much yet is that it supposedly has a more capable autofocus in low light conditions, which would obviously be extremely useful for bird photography, since birding in low light is often par for the course.

Caspian Tern. Mildly cropped with no other edits. The tern's head is partially in shadow but I really dig how much the bird pops, so to speak. 1/3200,F6.3, ISO 500. Photographed at Rancho de Bastardos.

So there you have it. The D7000 will now be the designated macro lens/landscape/people camera, and the D7200 will be doing the heavy bird lifting. So far I'm quite happy with it, and I look forward to all the memories we will make and the souls we will steal together. If any of you use the D7200 and have any tips or preferred settings for shooting birds, by all means leave a comment!

On Summer Sorrows (Doldrummer)

One day last summer, one of Rancho de Bastardo's Mourning Doves would repeatedly raise one wing above its head - it looked like some sort of display. It was bizarre. Did it think it was a Rock Sandpiper, or was this a cry for help? Even Mourning Doves need to be rescued from triple digit temperatures and drearily slow birding.

With Thanksgiving just behind us, I think now is a good time for a little reflection. A facet of life that I always want to improve on is appreciating experiences; not taking the positive aspects of my life for granted. So much of what we experience on a daily basis falls on the mediocre or crappy side of things (life is pain) that I try my best to not let those better moments go by without looking them in the eye, even if just in passing.

So what am I thankful for this year? Well, Annabelle is doing great, so that is awesome. I work from home, which is fantastic. There is a really good bottle of mezcal in the kitchen. I still get to see friends, despite being banished to the bowels of San Jose. But inevitably, the subject of birding must be broached. Of course, now that I am a father (which is still weird to say) I don't have nearly as much time to blog as I used to...BUT I still get to bird hella, and that is something I can really appreciate. The freedom to go flog the shrubbery and indulge my most basic nerd instincts is near and dear to me.

Oak Titmouse is a pleasant, dependable bird, always hanging tough through the summers.

Another thing I'm grateful for is the good birding around here. For months now, I get to see something rare/interesting pretty much every weekend. I don't take this for granted at all, I'm pretty lucky. What has made me, the #7 birder in the United States, so modest and humble? What has given me the ability to relish fall birding in the bay area?

It wasn't some epiphany, a major breakthrough, a conquering of the urge to loathe the familiar. The answer is simple...summer. I have been forced to spend a number of summers in the bay area now, and the birding can be so dull that as I write this sentence my mind is trying to think of something more interesting to focus its energies on. Will Giancarlo Stanton be traded to the Giants? Is Repeater still my favorite Fugazi album? If I really needed to obtain heroin for some reason, how long would it take me? Tacos sound good right now...mmmm, tacos.

Like the dove and the titmouse, some cheerful Bewick's Wrens holds it down at Rancho de Bastardos over summer. However, I am beginning to detect some sort of a pattern here...

As I don't live in northern latitudes and am without mountains of appreciable elevation nearby, the summer birding doldrums are not to be scoffed at. I'm not just talking about the dearth of warbler species that breed in Santa Clara County, or even the massive urban sprawl that eats up habitat like a disease. There are other factors at work. Unlike here, Californians living near the immediate coast experience the following conditions during the warmest months of the year: Graypril, May Gray, June Gloom, Gray Sky July, and Fogust. I long for that kind of summer. Where I live, we have no such luck. Overcast days are rare and precious, and there was not a lot of that going on in June or July. San Jose is sunny and hot as fuck, which is maddening considering there is an ocean nearby. Silicon Valley is not where you want to find yourself those months unless you are bringing home a staggering paycheck from a tech firm...or southbound shorebirds have returned. Climate change is a bitch, but so is geography. San Jose is on the hot side of the coastal range, and when migration is seemingly at a standstill, the summer doldrums are real.

Northern Rough-winged Swallow, another common bird of summer here at Rancho and across the state. Wait a second...why is every bird I've posted so far gray and brown? Is that seriously what all of our summer birds look like? That is awful. I can't tell you the relief I felt when we got a couple weeks into July and the shorebird floodgates opened up.

Well, maybe not all our summer birds are dirt-colored. Caspian Terns and their horrific, violent calls helped get me through to the other side. I've said it before, but it bears repeating...this is a nice yard bird.

A lot of our resident Anna's Hummingbirds were doing some pretty intensive molting in July. I'm glad we have them of course, but it will be a triumphant day when a second hummingbird species is added to the yard list.

I was a bit surprised to see this fledgling Tree Swallow (oh great, a new brown bird to recruit into the current brown bird population) at the Los Capitancillos Ponds, considering they are far outnumbered here by the other expected swallow species. I'm not sure if it was hatched here or wandered from another part of the south bay.

Thankfully, Calocortus rages against the dying of spring long after many other wildflowers have withered under the relentless sun. Canada del Oro Open Space Preserve, Santa Clara County, CA.

Now this is a brown bird of summer I can really back - Common Poorwill! I went some years without seeing any...though it is a pleasant heard-only, I'm glad that drought is over. Thankfully, there is a dependable area for them just a few minutes from Rancho. Brown it up! Photographed along the Calero Creek Trail in San Jose, CA.

Every year, early in July, the bird gods open the spigot of the shorebird tap. Least Sandpipers are one of the first species to return, and though they are still brown brown brown as can be, these first returning birds are a sight for sore eyes. Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge, CA.

Seeing your first mixed shorebird flocks in July is the light at the end of the summer tunnel of darkness. A lot of the avocets are probably locals, but the dowitchers came from afar.

Hint: If you want people to think you are god's gift to bird photography, don't ever post photos this bad (this was digiscoped). It's embarrassing...but I am not embarrassed to say that this is the weirdest avocet I've ever seen. It was essentially all white except for its primaries, giving it a Snow Goose look. Rad.

Yip-yip-yip-yip...father stilt made it very clear to me that he does not want me near his chicks, although he is always right next to the boardwalk so I don't know what he expects.

Stilt offspring! I usually see them when they are younger and fluffier, this inbetween stage (apparently characterized by fat cankles) does not last very long. I like the brown covert edgings.

Anise Swallowtail, I reckon. You know, for all the great success Rancho de Bastardos has had with birds, it has been completely miserable for butterflies. I'm not exactly happy about that. I guess I am doomed to start attracting them to my yard, as geri birders like myself tend to do.

Great! I think this post pretty much recounts falling into, and climbing out of, 2017's summer doldrums...covering those are always a tough blogging assignment every year, because it's basically a bunch of whining and some pictures of common birds. Better to limit that, eh? 

Massive Berserker Post

Although we are now in Ross's Goose season, this was a bird of spring. With a dent in its head for some reason, but more importantly, a bird from last spring. As you can guess, I have much blogwork to do. Stafford Lake, Marin County, CA.

Where did September go? Well dorks, there is one thing that we can all agree on...I have a lot of catching up to do with this blog. So with that unfortunate fact on the table, this post is going to be a photo blitz! No time for ruminating on the state of birding affairs or the usual bullshit. I typically don't include so many photos in a single post, but these are not typical times...

This Black-and-white Warbler was a totally unexpected find in a mixed flock at Point Reyes in mid-April. Most spring BAWWs in California are found in May. Five Brooks Pond, Marin County, CA.

I'm not used to seeing chipmunks at sea level, but then again Marin is the place to be to see mammals both of land and sea. I'm not familiar with this richly-colored species, which was also at Five Brooks Pond. Anybody? RT? JK?  Christian and TaxMan helped with the ID - this is a Sonoma Chipmunk.

I am used to seeing Pacific Wrens at sea level, though I pretty much never get to photograph them. 

This bird was singing from an exposed perch, with no apparent urge to hide as usual. Thank you Pacific Wren.

One day, Billy, Annabelle and I headed to the Santa Cruz coast to see a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher. We failed in this endeavor, and were forced to look at this pair of nesting Western Gulls instead. Not unexpected, but still unfortunate.

One of the big upsides to moving south from Albany to San Jose is that now I'm much closer to Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge, a great place for shorebirds and waterbirds in general. This Forster's Tern, which breed there, was in the midst of a display flight. Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge, Alviso, CA.

And this Forster's Tern had a wiggly cap.

I've pointed it out a couple times before, but it bears repeating...Forster's can have a gray wash on the underparts, like Commons, which is visible on all three of the above individuals.

Crushing terns brings me great joy.

This is one of my favorite FOTE shots I've ever taken, and I've taken a great many. I rarely get head-on shots with perf composure and focus, not to mention lighting.

These terns were discretely having some sex. Other birds were not so discrete that day.

Caspian Terns breed at the refuge as well. I think it is safe to assume that all the birds foraging behind my house (in the Los Capitancillos Ponds) all summer were commuting to and from nests here at the refuge - it's cool to see the home base of my backyard fish fiends.

These exhibitionist avocets decided to get down to some avosex right next to the trail.

This is how avocets are made.

The cloacal kiss!

The avocet version of a post-coital cuddle.

Black-necked Stilts were hanging around, doing it in the open as well.

Crossing bills and a wing-cuddle while copulating? I don't think PDA can go much further than that.

The male dismounted when finished but continued with the kissing and cuddling. Gross.

Thankfully, their display of raw stilt hedonism came to an end and we could all part ways without making eye contact. 

There were a few local rarities around on this morning as well, the best of which was this lingering Glaucous Gull. After going years without seeing any, I've seen them in three different counties so far this year. And so it goes...

A Savannah Sparrow, one of the local breeders, teed up briefly next to the trail. I would say more about it, but if I am being completely honest with you...I need more coffee.

Dynasty!!!

You may recall the news I broke to you at the beginning of June...the news that I Am Yardbirder. What has happened at Rancho Del Bastardos since then? A little and a lot. I'm here every day, I would know.

To be truthful, it's been a mixed bag. Some chocolate, some yogurt-covered almonds, and far too many disgusting Brazil nuts. Who likes Brazil nuts anyway? Talk about an unnecessary food. It doesn't matter, because by the end of July there was not a Brazil nut in sight.

Lesser Goldfinches love the thistle feeder to the point that they don't care if you are standing next to them, crushing them without respect or restraint.

If you're reading this, you are a birder, and you are intimately familiar with the phrase "summer doldrums", which plagues almost the entire state of California under 5,000 feet in elevation. If you think birding your favorite places in summer is uninspiring, you know that your backyard is not exactly going to be "going off".

In the first half of June I added two new species to the yard total - Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers. However, after HAWO, I was solidly shut out until the middle of July, when I got a heard-only Barn Owl with an assist from Annabelle, who had kindly woken me up in the middle of the night in order to get the bird. Apreesh. That brought me to 83 species for the yard, which is a pretty nice number if you ask me. Fall migration is underway, so I expect to do better in August than I did in July. The Los Capitancillos Ponds are full to the brim though, so my chances for adding some shorebirds other than what I have already (Killdeer and Spotted Sandpiper) are dishearteningly low at best.

Hooded Oriole/Black-headed Grosbeak yard combo! Sure this may be a normal combo in some southeast Arizona yards, but it is novel for me. Hooded Orioles are fairly common in the neighborhood, but grosbeaks have only put in a handful of appearances so far. The late spring Rose-breasted I wanted to visit so badly never materialized, so I am now waiting for a fall Rose-breasted.

In May, you will remember that Rancho Del Bastardos had the highest species list of any yard in the state of California (ranked by eBird), an honor bestowed upon me that I did not accept with nonchalance. Who knew that my little bastard-filled ranchito would be so dominant? Well, I am happy to report that not only did Rancho Del Bastardos take top honors in May, we took it in June!

Incredible! Back-to-back big months!

In July, things were different though...by checking California yard lists in eBird, I could tell that other yardbirders were getting pretty fucking pissed off by Rancho Del Bastardo's dominance of California yards for two months in a row. But I birded, and birded, and birded the shit out of my yard. By the final days of the month, I was tied for first place, and the rest of the competition had been outbirded (sorry Brian, we can't all be #7....oh and please don't kick me off eBird).

While I can see Acorn Woodpeckers distantly every day, they have only come to the feeder a couple times. On this occasion, the bird enthusiastically tried to impale House Sparrows with its bill, a gesture I appreciated.

Bewick's Wrens are constantly in the yard. When will the scolding cease?

Finally, I decided to take decisive action. I could not tolerate this yardbirding stalemate any longer. I spent some time outside one evening, to see if anything different from the morning scene would fly by...and I did not have to wait for long. BANG Barn Swallow. BOOM White-throated Swift. KAPLOOEEYYYYYYY Common Raven!!! Ok, none of these are rare birds or anything, or new to the yard list, but they were all new for the month! And with these final additions, Madison Bumgarner and Buster Posey joyously embraced...a triple crown for Rancho Del Bastardos!

Like the San Francisco Giants once had, I am now in the midst of a yardbirding DYNASTY here at Rancho Del Bastardos. More species have been recorded from my yard than any other California yards for three consecutive months...I am waiting for eBird to send me my championship yardbirding rings.

Some of the local mockingbirds are constantly doing this wing-flashing thing when they are foraging, it's pretty funny. This recently-fledged juvenile also embraced the technique.

It's a very deliberate and conspicuous habit, not just a quick wing flick. More mockingbirds should do this, it is very becoming.

Caspian Terns are foraging behind my house constantly. I haven't had a whole lot of luck crushing waterbirds from my backyard, but the terns do give some good opportunities. Also, it is really weird to be accustomed to hearing the guttural, violent calls of these these things from your own suburban living room.

I want to thank all of you, because we have the greatest fans in the world! This is for you! And don't worry, we won't be resting on our laurels over here...a fourth month of yardbirding glory sounds even better than three.

See you at the victory parade.