birdspot

The temperature has dropped, seemingly all at once and surprisingly, though in actuality it has been creeping downward rather steadily. I, too, am crawling out of this season, counting days as the hours shorten and bird migration slows, meandering when I might prefer to be beelining. Enough of slow changes and floating between seasons. I stamp my feet (figuratively and literally - now, in my favorite Converse, my toes are cold), and my impatience borders on impertinence. Bring on winter and get it over with.

Last week I spent a day in Central Park with three esteemed bird photographers, combing through Sparrow Rock and Maintenance Meadow in an altogether different fashion from my usual fall migration mania. David Speiser kindly invited me along to photograph with him, Lloyd Spitalnik, and Harry Maas. The sheer heft of serious photography equipment has kept me from sacrificing everything else I own in order to buy 800mm lenses and flashes and video tripod mounts, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t drool over really nice optics and gadgetries when I see them. I chose my own 300mm Canon lens (amazing within its range) for its mobility and hand holdability (is that truly a word?). The gear that these guys trot around the park commands a different respect, and demands a certain level of physical deliberateness. Add to this the Sisyphean challenge of trying to get amazing shots of tiny, active migrant songbirds, and you start to get the idea that this endeavor requires a level of patience and intuition not possessed by many.

I had a sneaking suspicion that these three characters might make up for hours of grey chilly weather and the near-useless, half-blurred warbler photos I would inevitably produce in such circumstances. I had the idea that witty banter would be flying, and I sincerely hoped that at least they were the sorts to have a nice sit in the Boathouse, because generally when I stay in one place for a long time the only thing I really want to do is eat. They do eat (and banter), of course, and then some, and the day I spent with them was fantastic. I didn’t pester them too much with questions on technique or exposure settings (they offer excellent classes for such things), but I did watch. I took about a hundred photos of this first-year Blackpoll Warbler, in between repartee and Central Park folklore.

Like all migrating birds, this warbler was hungry, but in this obvious fact, there are degrees to hungry. There is hunger, and then there is hunger tinged with desperation. As we clicked away (unobtrusively, I would like to state), I began to feel like this bird was experiencing the latter. It spent an unusual amount of time out in the open, along a wooden and wire fence. It returned to the fence over and over, even when it seemed impossible that any tiny living creature could possibly be left on it. This drew growing sighs of exasperation from the photographers, because if the Blackpoll were to alight on the stunted pine tree nearby, the shots would take on an instant, almost Japanese beauty. It did not prefer the pine, however, for the simple reason that there were more insects to be found on the fence. I took many partially obscured and strange rear view shots. The bird flew well, but held its wings drooped slightly, and after maybe ten minutes I realized that the left wing was drooping lower than the right. This was consistent the entire time we viewed the bird (like 16 hours, judging by how cold my feet were. well OK, not really 16). It was definitely favoring its left wing. This was a subtle observation, not an obvious tragedy in the making, but one I may have missed from a shorter encounter. The bird did, finally, fly in to us at the pine tree, the sun broke out a bit, and good photos were had all around. Followed by hot soup and coffee.

Two studies of a Blackpoll Warbler, pencil on paper, 11.5 x 11″
David Speiser’s photo of the same bird: http://www.lilibirds.com
Lloyd Spitalnik’s photo of the same bird: http://lloydspitalnikphotos.com

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