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Ashland birds (and one bug)

I recently spent some time at the Ashland Nature Center. In addition to their nature trails and other facilities, they have a set of bird feeders next to a blind, specifically for birdwatching.

This setup results in bird photography on easy mode. I still managed to mess up most shots; these are some of those that came out OK. Enjoy!

Eastern bluebird

I had been wanting to get some EABL pictures for a while. These birds were quite cooperative, the lighting somewhat less so.

A male Eastern bluebird sitting on a branch, facing slightly away in a school-picture-day pose.
A male Eastern bluebird sitting on a branch, his head turned towards the camera.
A male Eastern bluebird sitting on a branch, in profile.

Red-winged blackbird

The RWBLs were out in force, and were happy to pose by the feeders and in the trees.

A male red-winged blackbird perched on a thick branch, looking pointedly downwards. His red-and-yellow wing patches contrast sharply against its dark body.
A male red-winged blackbird perched on a medium branch. He faces downward as he calls; his beak is open and wings slightly extended, the red feathers fluffed.
A male red-winged blackbird perched on a narrow branch. Animated: he calls out, puffing out its chest and spreading his wings slightly as it does so.
How I made the animation

This was fun to put together! My current defaults for “bird mode” are to shoot at 5FPS as long as the shutter button is held; I had 7 shots while this bird was calling. But at full extension (400mm focal length) and shooting upwards, my hands were a little shaky. A little bit of searching and trial-and-error got me “stabilized animated .webp from images.”

I started with a set of lossless PNGs (16-bit color depth) exported from Darktable. I tried “just” pushing them into an mkv with ffmpeg, but the video stabilization library didn’t like that – it wanted YUV color, not RGB. So, step one (from this post) was to encode as H264 video:

ffmpeg -y \
    -r 5 \
    -i rwbl-call-%04d.png \
    -c:v libx264 \
    -crf 0 \
    rwbl-call-raw.mkv

Then per this post, use two passes to stabilize and encode as webp:

ffmpeg -i rwbl-call-raw.mkv \
    -vf vidstabdetect=shakiness=10:accuracy=15 \
    -f null -
ffmpeg -y -i rwbl-call-raw.mkv \
    -vf vidstabtransform \
    -vcodec libwebp \
    -quality 90 \
    -loop 0 \
    rwbl-call.webp
A male red-winged blackbird, perched in perfect profile. This is a juvenile: the white stripe on his wing is present, but the red patch above it has not yet come in, and his back has some brown mottling instead of a pure black.
A male red-winged blackbird, with some juvenile patterning, perched in a fork of a tree with one claw on each branch. he looks accusingly forward.
The same red-winged blackbird in the same pose, but with his beak open in song, or call.
A female red-winged blackbird on a horizontal branch. She is not obviously impressed.
A juvenile male red-winged blackbird on a different pair of branches, poised to leap away.

Purple finch

A male purple finch on a perch of a birdfeeder. His beak is dwarfed by the sunflower seed it holds.
A male purple finch on a perch of a birdfeeder. His beak has a few crumbs on it, having just finished a seed. His head is cocked jauntily.
A male purple finch on a branch. He stretches his neck out and upwards slightly, giving the bird an elongated shape.

House finch

A pair of house finches share a thin branch, facing the same direction. The colorful male is perched slightly higher.
A male house finch perches on a branch and looks to the side. Shadows play across his chest, adding complexity to the red-and-gray pattern of his feathers.

Northern cardinal

A female northern cardinal perches on a branch and leans forward, as if inspecting something.
A female northern cardinal stands on the ground below a birdfeeder, in a rich pile of dropped seeds.

Tree swallow

A tree swallow perches on top of a wooden birdhouse of traditional make, ignoring the lichen along the edge. Its beak is slightly open, almost smiling.
Two tree swallows perch, not quite together, on a pair of metal rods crossing above a martin box. One of them calls upwards, beak open and wings akimbo.
Two tree swallows perch on a pair of metal rods crossing above a martin box. The more vocal one leans forward along the wire and calls; the other turns away slightly. Definitely not together.

Others

A palm warbler on a branch of a spicebush in early bloom. The bird has taste; it is color-coordinated with the tufts of petals on the branches. Palm warbler
A white-breasted nuthatch peeks from around a dead tree branch. Its downward-facing pose would be precarious for a lesser bird. White-breasted nuthatch
A white-throated sparrow stands on the tray of a house-shaped birdfeeder. It has had its fill, for now. White-throated sparrow
A male downy woodpecker peeks from behind a thin trunk. The red spot on his neck is just visible as he turns his head to look at something. Downy woodpecker
okay Blue jay
A glinting turquoise insect on pale, dry wood. Not a bird

About

See this page for equipment used; these all photos all use the 28-400 lens. Animals were identified humanely, by a pre-trained neural network, run locally while we had dinner one night.

All photos by Charles Eckman. All rights reserved. If you are interested in using these photos for commercial or non-commercial purposes, please contact me.