Morning Serenade

As we were tromping around in the darkness during our pre-dawn photo session in Joshua Tree National Park, the birds were singing away.  It was so lovely, I pulled out my phone, opened up the Merlin app and started identifying birds.  They were mostly Cliff Wrens and Cactus Wrens, but there were a few others.

As I made my way over to an area that, in the darkness, seemed to have some potential, I set down my camera bag to more carefully examine the area.  As the bag hit the ground, a loud wren started singing right behind me.  It was the loudest of the bird songs that morning and I knew it was close by, so I slowly turned around to see if I could find it.  After a few moments, and a couple of songs, I found it on the top of a Joshua Tree.  I then decided to see if I could photograph it.

Thing is, I was afraid any sudden movement would scare it off.  So I slowly turned back around, grabbed my tripod and slowly extended it.  I then zipped open my camera bag pulled out my camera with its wide angle lens on it, and slowly stood back up and put the camera on the tripod.  The bird kept sining, pausing, and singing again.  I waited a bit, then slowly turned around, tripod in hand.  The scene looked pretty poor, but I thought if I could step to my right a couple of steps, it just might work.  So I did . . .  one step . . .  pause . . .  two steps, pause.  No sudden moves.  Good enough.

I quickly framed an obvious image, focused the camera and released the shutter.  Again.  Again.  Again. It was tough trying to time the two second-delay timer that I’d left set on the camera, and the long exposure, with the bird’s sining.  In one of the images the bird was moving around and became a blurry mess in the exposure.  For two frames he stood still enough, in-between songs, to render fairly sharp.

And just to see what would happen, I tried (and succeeded) to time the exposure for when the bird was sining.

Four frames was all he gave me.  And then he flew away.  The landscape image itself is nice enough (the detail is just a blown-up detail).  Neither image is exceptional.  The experience that morning, however, was exceptional.  To be out photographing with a bird serenading you, now that is something special!

So did you find which tree he was in?

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