Birder's World

In the past few days I have gone to the Los Angeles County Arboretum several times to photograph the Indian Blue Peacocks Pavo crisatus. Their courtship ritual is unlike anything else I have ever seen. The males (peacock) have the colorful feathers and raise them to try wooing the females (peahen). They get a bit aggressive especially if the females aren't paying much attention as such the case when I was there. The male will then ruffle it's feathers and run back and forth bumping into everything in its path in an effort to get attention. It's so fascinating I don't even have words to explain it. I spent three hours photographing them and took several hundred photos. After being there so long they got used to me and let me hang out wherever I wanted. I was even able to get frame-filling pictures with my 17-35mm lens. Here is a picture of a peacock catching the attention of a peahen.

Picture: Indian Peafowl Blue Peacock (Pavo crisatus) Courting a Peahen, Los Angeles County Arboretum, California

The peacocks weren't very active yesterday so I only spent about an hour with them then spent the rest of the time photographing the Mayberg Waterfall, Wood Ducks, lagoon and Queen Anne Cottage. I don't know of anywhere else within a few miles of my home that offers this many photo opportunies for bird photography. In addition to the famous peacocks I saw many wood ducks, Snow Geese, Canada Goose, and a few Herons in the ponds and lagoon. The squirrels were making me a bit nervous however as they kept following me and standing next to me. Getting rabies is not something that I want.

Photo: Wood Duck (Aix sponsa)

Picture: Mallard Duck (Anas platyrhynchos) Flapping Wings in Front of Lagoon and Queen Anne Cottage, Los Angeles County Arboretum, California

I must admit that I underestimated how difficult it is to get photos of wood ducks. They are constantly moving and since I prefer to photograph in diffused lighting conditions it made for a lot of blurry photos. As a result, I had to toss out some nice colorful sunset wood duck water reflection photos. I took some action photos of a wood duck flapping its wings wildly and being hostile toward other ducks but didn't like how I composed the photos so I plan to photograph them again soon. I don't mind messing up all my shots as long as I'm trying to photograph something in a different way than has already been done. If you aren't trying for something unique with your own twist then why bother photographing? Striving for anything less is too easy.

I'd like to purchase a Canon 400mm f5.6 L lens in the future as my $150 Tamron 70-300 lens has so many chromatic aberration defects (purple and blue color fringing) on bright edges that I end up throwing out the majority of photos I take with it at 300mm. Hence the reason why I prefer to photograph birds in diffused lighting. Plus the AF is so slow that I have to manually focus my bird photos. One good thing about my cheap lens is that it's sharp from 70mm to about 210mm at the f7.1 - f11 aperture range. The 400mm prime lens on the other hand has fast autofocus and is razor sharp from what I've seen of the reviews. Plus it's only $1000. There's no other good lens of that length on the market for that price. I wish it weren't white color though. If I buy the lens down the road, I'll probably put a camouflage cover on it.

Check my New Photos gallery for more photos.