Spring, at Last

I got up before 7am for the early-morning alternate-side-parking shuffle. On the way out, my wife said sleepily, "Are you going out birding?"

I wasn't going to, but I grabbed the camera anyway. Doesn't hurt to take a quick look around Inwood Hill Park.

Dark-eyed juncos foraging on the ground; song sparrows and red-winged blackbirds singing in the marsh grass by the soccer field. A pair of blue jays, yammering at some unseen raptor way up on the ridge. And an eastern phoebe: one of the first migrants to arrive in the spring, a little gray bird, buff yellow breast, pumping its tail, flying up and down from ground to branch.

If anything, these pictures show the limitations of the camera. Or my ignorance of some of the camera settings. I have a 250mm lens, f5.6, and a more knowledgeable friend, a professional photographer, said that f-number means that it doesn't let much light in. Lower f-numbers (focal length?) are better. Even on a moderately overcast morning, there was a distinctly long shutter click for these pictures, which means that even though the focus was tight, the slightest incidental motion of the camera gives the pictures a slight blur. The second picture simply happened to be taken in better light.

Well, I don't have the means to shell out for a top-of-the-line 400mm lens. That's ten grand! Yikes! I have bought cars for less. I'll have to compromise with a bargain-basement 400mm and a monopod.