Waubansee County, Kansas

April 9th_2019

Forgive me when I post too many photos of the grouse!

On April 9th 3 friends and I drove south of the city to a Sharp-tailed Grouse lek. I hadn't thought about the degree of difficulty that might challenge me in climbing over the stile with a knee replacement. I really struggled so I do not think I will be returning to see the grouse in future years.

Thanks for your visits, comments and faves! They are all appreciated!

#Sharp

Theme du #macroMondays

Branche de sapin 4cm.

Sharp pocket computers, PC1350 and PC1360. These were the only two PC13XX models released by Sharp in 1984 and 1987. Both had 4 lines of 24 characters and were very capable in their day for BASIC programming, graphing, etc.

The key differences between the two were increased memory, an additional RAM port, as well as improved BASIC and faster CPU in the PC1360.

This peculiar, forty-five degree angle of a pasture corner casts a different shadow. The boulders inside the fence are evidence of hydraulic mining for gold in Tuolumne County, California.

www.texastargetbirds.com

Yesterday I had an opportunity to spend the morning out at Smith Point for the hawk watch and it ended up being a great experience with plenty of raptors seen and photographed. This young Sharp-shinned Hawk flew right over us at close range and definitely checked us out.

_MG_0127-web

Accipiter striatus

Hawk Ridge, Duluth MN, heading west skirting the ridge...

shot with a fujifilm x-s10 and a 7artisans 35mm f1.2 mark i lens

Taken @ 30mm with a cheap 2x TC and the canon 1.4x to make 840mm LOL

Nikon D750 + Nikkor 50mm 1.8

Have a mouth as sharp as a dagger,

but a heart as soft as tofu.

(Chinese Proverb)

Weekly Theme Challenge - Something Fluffy

Looking close... on Friday! - Combination of Soft & Sharp

(photo by Freya, edit by me)

Thanks for views, faves and comments!

Cooper's Hawk

Accipiter cooperii

A visitor to my back yard early this past fall. I think it sees me, I am lucky to have not spooked it.

So, Sharpie or Coop? The top blocks of the retaining wall it landed on are about three inches thick, putting the bird at roughly 12-14 inches head to tail. The tail appears to be rather squared off, plus the streaking looks more like Sharp-shinned rather than Cooper's. All things considered I'm calling it a Sharpie. What do you think?

CORRECTION: A couple sharp-eyed Flickr friends provided evidence that this hawk is a Cooper's, not a Sharp-shinned. See the comments below. I stand corrected.

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Grand Traverse County, Michigan

Kestrel [torenvalk]

Location: Zeeland, The Netherlands

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My Instagram account

Just look at the toes on those feet.

Today I photographed most of bird species that visited my backyard. The highlights were Anna's Hummingbird and a Sharp-shinned Hawk. Also seen and photographed were Downy Woodpecker, Dark-eyed Juncos, House Finches, American Goldfinches, House Sparrows, Black-capped Chickadees, White-crowned Sparrows. I also saw an American Kestrel, Eurasian Collared Doves, and just before dark a Song Sparrow.

I have seen this bird before. It has a small patch of yellow on it's throat.

This morning it killed and ate a Dark-eyed Junco. It returned early afternoon for a photo shoot or maybe it returned for lunch.

IMG_9121

Gibbaeum petrense

I found this bird in my backyard yesterday (10/31) eating a Halloween treat. The prey may have been a Dark-eyed Junco. Unfortunate for the junco but the hawk has to eat. Although it is hard to tell from the photo the hawk was under the canopy of a shrub on a dark mostly cloudy day so the shutter speed was slow and the photos are not as sharp as I would like. Yakima County, Washington. IMG_9526

Sharpness

Credits: ↝ тмσ ↜

Located : Between Kamisakaemachi station and Otani station on the Keishin Line of Keihan Railway.

Osaka, Otsu-shi, Shiga pref.

京阪電気鉄道京津線 / 上栄町駅 - 大谷駅 間

長安寺地蔵堂前踏切にて撮影

滋賀県大津市逢坂2丁目

Sharp-tailed Sandpiper

A few more shots of these birds feeding a long the sand flats at low tide..

Scientific name: Calidris acuminata

Coyote teeth, very sharp also. Taxidermy.

Werribee

Victoria, Australia

for the Macro Mondays challenge “Sweet Spot Squared” (September 19th 2016)

I like a little sharp and tangy taste with my sugar, so I chose raspberries ;o)

Finding and shooting the sweet spot!

I've got 3 macro 1:1 lenses now - but when I started out there was only one to fit my new Sony NEX-6, and it was Sony's eMount 30mm/3.5. That was March 2013, and I learned macro work through that lens for the next 2 years. So that was the lens I chose for this challenge.

I shoot macro in Manual, and have never explored the 'sweet spot' before - so I followed Janet's directions and used Aperture mode and shot all 17 F stop settings the lens has on two 2cm raspberries. I scattered sugar granules of various sizes both in front and behind the raspberries, to give me an idea of just how the overall image sharpness changes with the F/stop change.

Comparing the shots I used Janet's direction again: "You will be looking for the shot that has the sharpest details with as little blurring as possible". I thought it would be simple - F22 is the inevitable choice to offer minimal blurring, while keeping the subject in focus.

But I found a puzzling oddity. From F16 through to F22 the sharpness of the background elements increased, but the sharpness of the 'in focus' elements fell off. I repeated the experiment with a strawberry (a much larger subject) and the same result emerged - past F16 the 'in focus' elements of the shot suffered!

I went online to see if I could find an explanation. And the trusty B&H website came through with an article:

www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/content/rules-thumb-finding-...

I needed to compromise and take 2 or 3 stops back from F22 to find the best balance. There was little to choose between F16 and F18. This shot uses F16. And yes - I did then crop the original shot I used, to highlight the main raspberry, and leaving out most of the background sugar 'scatter'.

I hope it hits the sweet spot with you too :o)

Following on from the discussion Where do you draw the line? I've taken an old credit card as my guide, which is 3"x2" and added measures in cm too. I do SO hope that this will become the standard for Macro Mondays! My 2 raspberries are set on this 'new' format for my regular establishing shot in the first comment field

My 2016 Macro Mondays set: 2016 Macro Mondays

My Food and drink set: Food and Drink

I also visited the cactus house in the Botanic Gardens.

Sharp Airlines is a locally based regional carrier.

Gorse, ulex Europaeus. Common on UK heathland and invasive where introduced into the “New World”. It’s seeds are a source of Anti-H lectin which is used as a marker for the H antigen in human red cells ( in ABO blood grouping) and is one of many such plant extracts used in biological and medical research.

Tigre / Argentina

[EXPLORE - 2014-04-08]

Album of Argentina: www.flickr.com/photos/tabliniumcarlson/albums/72157711999...

Album of "explored" photos: www.flickr.com/photos/tabliniumcarlson/albums/72157634980...

Pretty sure this is a sharp-shinned hawk Accipiter striatus, just guessing. Another possibility might be a Merlin, though this bird's head is not quite shaped right, nor does it have any 'eyebrow' mark, as a merlin might (but not always) have.

I just don't see either of them often enough to know.

This little (crow size) raptor has been hanging around my little pond for several days, swooping rapidly from under cover likely grabbing little songbirds.

We first noticed the flickers completely disappeared from our backyard, including the mating pair, as well as an unusual disapperance and silence for long stretches of time, from other songbirds.

Perhaps the result of this bird taking the opportunity to ambush feed on the numerous little songbirds that have arrived.

Sharp and soft

...and the path from Mousethwaite coomb.

Pakowki Lake, Alberta.

Or woman, as the sexes look very similar (apparently the male's bill is longer than the female's).

I can't go too long without posting a shot of the dazzling Collared Aracari - a member of the Toucan family.

Taken in the Caribbean Foothills of Costa Rica during a rain shower.

This was an experiment to see how altering the settings on the camera affected the sharpness of the bee.

Alpine, NJ

Macro of this Bosen Thistle.

YPD51 rounds the extremely sharp curve just short of the switch to the Steel Bridge on the east side of the Willamette River. This undoubtedly has to be one of the sharpest curves on a major main line in North America today. Trains creep through here at a little more than walking speed.

Redmond, WA

Across a creek, tucked away in his perch