Magee Marsh Intro

I finally made it to Magee Marsh after bad weather last year cancelled us out. The weather was great! The birds were great! The camaraderie with all the birders was great. I will be adding birds as the days go by. Today I start with two birds with similar names but very different. What variety! I am starting to get as addicted as the birders. What an amazing creator God is!

I was asked to share info on camera settings on the pictures I take, so here goes. When I shoot birds I use shutter priority mode, especially little 3-4 inch warblers that flit around I use 1/1000 sec and an f-stop from 400-3200 to give enough light to use an aperature of f8-11. I shoot with a Canon 7D II which has a crop sensor. I use a 100-400mm lens with a 1.4 teleconverter that equals 560mm. Some birds at Magee are close and I can fill the frame. Others are high up in the trees and the birds only fill 1/4 to 1/6 of the frame and I crop. I love if the birds have sun shining on them, but that is not always the case since the foliage coverage can put them in shadows. Therefore, a lot of times I use flash with my Better Beamer so it can throw the flash way up in those trees to reach the birds.

Black-throated Blue Warbler- male

Black-throated Green Warbler-female