Upde Designs

Happy Sunday!  ~  299

Typical Saturday for me.  Even though I had Friday off it was still pretty much a veg day.  I had three basic projects that I wanted to accomplish yesterday and only one of them got done.

After spending some time with Andreas last Saturday and having so much fun shooting the small birds I had decided to get some bird feeders for our back yard.  The problem with our set up is there are no trees close to the house.  They are all at the back of the property.  We did that so that the our kids and their friends would have an uninterrupted play ground for bad-mitten, croquet, and other yard games.  Now of course it would be nice to have some small trees up close so the birds could set on them.  I’ll have to figure out something.

The one project that I did get done was to test the Tamron 150 – 600 mm lens.  My neighbor also has a lot of bird feeders so I was standing in my yard shooting some Finches in his back yard.  He came over for a visit and it turns he is an avid bird watcher as well.  He used to photograph some of the birds he watched but now he just enjoys watching them.  He has many bird feeders and has had everywhere he has lived before.  He gave me some good ideas of where I could put the bird feeders and what kind to get.

Another part of this story is that I have never used a gimbal on my tripod.  By looking at them I couldn’t see the advantage of them over the ball head that I now use.  That is until I spent some time last Saturday watching Andreas use his gimbal head.  A light bulb went off in my head (there was no permanent damage done.)  So that is what they are good for.  I found an inexpensive one on Amazon.com and I was also trying it out this weekend.  WOW!  Talk about a Duh moment.  Why haven’t I done this before.  It makes shooting wildlife so much easier.  I’m hooked.

Jeanne and I have had several discussions in the past about bird feeders and the whole feeding the birds thing.  She had some good reservations and so we talked some more Saturday about it.  She said she would go with me to look at them, which was helpful.  Being so impulsive, there was no telling what I would have come back with.

We bought a couple of feeders and a pole to hang them from.  Some bird feed and few other items and then went home.  When we got home we discovered we had left part of the stand in the shopping cart so back to the store.  Fortunately an honest person had turned it in to customer service so we got it back without having to buy another one.  🙂

After we got everything filled and set up, I sat close to the house in the shade with my tripod and within 15 minutes we had our first Finch.  Like Jeanne said, they know where other feeders are, they’ll learn where ours is.

So it was an enjoyable afternoon watching the feeders and shooting the ubiquitous Robins in the yard.   I have not made a final judgement on the Tamron lens.  It seems to be sharp when set up correctly for the lighting conditions.  Very fast on focusing and much quieter than my Sigma.   Right now I would have to say the Sigma is a tad bit sharper but there is still a lot of testing and experimenting to be done.

Thanks for stopping by the blog.  Enjoy your Sunday and be careful.