Where's that confounded bridge?

Natural Bridges State Beach, Santa Cruz
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.

Here's a look at half the bridge from the beach in Santa Cruz. Pelicans really dig it, as you can see. (hint: those rocks aren't naturally white and streaky like that)

Another friendly bird

Red-necked Phalarope
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.

I noticed someone digiscoping with their Swarovski spotting scope, and headed over to see if he had found something interesting. He had evidently been looking at some Phalaropes. Although they flew off as I first approached, they later returned to a much sunnier spot.

Black Turnstone

Black Turnstone
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.

We got to Natural Bridges toward sunset, and the Turnstones and Sanderlings were feeding in the surf, seemingly oblivious to nearby people and pets. I've never gotten so close to a Turnstone before, it was really magical. I shot nearly 80 pictures in about 20 minutes

Willow Flycatcher

Willow Flycatcher
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.

Here I am testing Blogger's integration with flickr. This photo is allegedly of a Willow Flycatcher we saw with the Audubons at Point Reyes National Seashore. I'm not sure there are enough field marks here to really be sure of the diagnosis. Any opinions?

Gear lust

I wonder if I can explain to you with a straight face why I really, really need a Canon EOS 20d camera body. My buddy Dan just got one, I played with it at lunch today, and WOW it's nice.

Compared to the Canon EOS 300D I already have, what has this new camera got? Glad you asked. Mostly, it's just faster -- it starts up faster, writes pictures to the memory card faster, lets you change your settings faster. It does that really cool AI Servo autofocus mode whenever you want, the one that lets you track flying birds (the 300D only does it in dorky Sports mode). And it's a lot less likely to tell me BUSY while I'm trying to capture that hawk flying right overhead.

And, it's black. Need I say more?

We ROCKED the CFC

We did the SFBBO CFC and WE ROCKED. More news later, very sleep now.

SFBBO CFC Madness

Every year the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory sponsors a Big Day competition called the California Fall Challenge, in which teams attempt to raise the most money while seeing the highest possible percentage of the known birds in a particular California county during a single 24 period. We did San Mateo county last year, and had a great time. We've only today signed up to do San Benito county with R. J. Adams tomorrow! And when I say tomorrow, I mean starting about 12 hours from now. Wahoo!

an evening with the Santa Clara Valley Audubons

Last night at the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society general meeting, I saw a very cool lecture by Doug Cheeseman about Antarctica. He's a very engaging speaker, and has accumulated some 20 years worth of excellent photos of penguins, seals, glaciers, sea lions, and albatross. Someday, Mary and I hope to go on one of his Africa trips.

After the lecture I had a chance to chat with birder and photographer Mike Danzenbaker. I met him over Labor Day while we were both out shooting, and was amazed to see that he handholds an eleven pound 500mm lens using a shoulder stock (like a rifle). The results are incredible. I don't think I've ever seen so many crisp flight shots of passerines know for their erratic flight (i. e., Chimmney Swift) as you'll find on his site. An inspiration to us all, and a very helpful and friendly guy.

you know you're a birder when...

...you spend time at work solving other people's Eagle identification problems over the internet using google and instant messenger to your spouse. It was fun.

is Diebold going to count your vote? is it really?

Please read this blackboxvoting.org article about Diebold voting equipment. It is very worrying.

hey web people, lend me your ears

I have just posted some new viewing capabilities for birdWalker, my field notes and bird photos database. I would love to get some reactions to the information design and navigation controls. Basically, from most pages you should have several options:

* breadcrumb trail -- leads you from the specific page you're on back up to the title page

* browse buttons -- lets you move to the next, first, last, previous item to the one you're viewing

* view buttons -- view the current item in different ways (by year, by month, as list)

* global menu -- get back to the main indices for trips, locations, birds

Does it make any sense?

The Big Lens Weekend

I hope everybody had a nice holiday weekend. Thanks to a lot of legwork by Mary, we got to spend Saturday up at Point Reyes National Seashore. We spent the morning birding with the Santa Clara Valley Audubon society folks, the afternoon on our own. Here's our trip list, click on the little camera icons to see the photos.

These photos were taken with the Canon 500mm f4.5/L that we rented from Keeble and Shuchat for the weekend. It is a very nice and very heavy piece of glass. I wanted to find out whether I'd be willing to lug this monster around on a birding trip and actually keep up with other birders. The answer is a qualified "yes". I carried it around the Drake's beach visitor center, and from the parking lot out to the Point Reyes Lighthouse. Some kind of carrying strap would be nice, but in the meantime the tripod ring serves as a pretty well-balanced handle.

I got roughly the same proportion of good photos that I always get (i. e., fancy equipment does not make you a better photographer, dang it). When I was able to hold the lens still with good light, the results were pretty amazing, this thing is very sharp.

I took it to Picchetti Winery on Sunday, and photographed some common birds (particularly the Dark-eyed Junco). I also took it to the Coyote Creek Field Station and to the Don Edwards NWR on Monday. While at Don Edwards, I met a fellow who uses the newer 500mm f4/L IS with a shoulder stock and no tripod. Amazing.

must read: Mark Pilgrim on "Why Specs Matter"

Mark Pilgrim has written a brilliant essay called "Why Specs Matter". If, like me, you've struggled to implement and explain systems that import, use, or generate WSDL, XSD, or XSLT, you gotta read this.

the entropy pool is closed for cleaning!

Did you know that your Linux computer can run out of entropy? And that "When the entropy pool is empty, reads to /dev/random will block until additional environmental noise is gathered." Guess whether that has a salutary effect on the Java virtual machine!