Ugh! Monday already. Doesn’t seem like there was much of a weekend. I did get the new light fixtures installed in the kitchen and dinning room. They turned out pretty good in spite of my best effort to screw them up 🙂
Saturday was pretty much shot after we got done with the light fixtures. So no photo trip on Saturday. We did get out Sunday afternoon for a couple of hours. Drove for an hour and didn’t find anything that I wanted to capture an image of. Saw a lot of stuff I haven’t seen around here before and was on some roads that I had never traveled.
The Blue Heron above was at the 16th Street Basin. There wasn’t a lot going on but he was there until I tried to get a little too close and then he was gone as well.
He flew off and then after a while he came back by. Apparently he still wasn’t happy with my position because he made a big circle of the pond and then took off in the general direction of the river.
We drove over to the river and up around the Lock and Dam but other than a lot of fishermen there just wasn’t any wildlife around. So we drove down to the river walk area and ran into to some friends of ours. We had a brief visit with them and then off to see what else we could find.
We went back to the 16th Street Basin. I saw several of these large black birds flying over the Basin. At first I thought they might be juvenile eagles but upon examination of my images I discovered they were Turkey Vultures.
This is not a very good shot but it was the only one I had that was even half way in focus. I don’t know why I couldn’t get the Sigma to focus on them. I was having pretty good luck with the little gulls but for some reason this big bird just wasn’t holding a focus.
I don’t mean to be insensitive but damn these are ugly birds. They have a face only a mother could love. 🙂 So some pretty uninspiring images today but at least I got out with my camera on a really beautiful day.
Enjoy your week. Hope to have more images for you as the week unfolds. Thanks for stopping by and be careful.
Upde Designs 
The AF sensor of your camera looks for contrast in order to adjust focus. It will find the contrast only on the outline of a dark bird like the Turkey Vulture. It is difficult to keep the AF sensor on the face of a bird in flight and the chest is usually your best bet. The eye and the breast are on the same focal plane and if you keep the AF sensor on the bird’s breast your chances to get a sharp image increase. Beside that good panning technique is a must. Try it again Dave, we have many vultures around here. I’m not there yet either. Still don’t have a tack sharp image of a Turkey Vulture…
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