No problem 😃
None of the following is necessarily the right way to do this, it just works for me.
I use Fast Raw Viewer to cull my images from the card. It's very quick and has lots of useful tools for quickly analysing images and segregating them.
From there I store the images on my NAS.
I have various top level folders on the NAS by topic like holidays, portraits, wildlife, macro etc
Each top level folder will contain subfolders based on logical differentiators e.g wildlife--location, or Portraits --person
This makes it easy to find an image via folder navigation without going through lightroom.
For wildlife I visit the same places so i sequentially rename the new photos to continue from the last one in the sequence. E.g
Wildlife--Bempton--Bempton0000001.nef
I have one lightroom catalogue and I import the images into it from the folder.
I tag the images as I import them with useful tags. I have been meaning to add species to my wildlife images but that will take some weeks lol
Lightroom will let me find the images by folder or tag or exif data or date etc
I will score the images at this point which can help when searching.
Once imported I will select the ones I want to spend extra time on. Once any additional processing is done I might then use Topaz sharpen and denoise.
Lightroom's noise reduction has gotten very good lately so I don't tend to use denoise anymore.
If I want to print the image (rare) it will be on acrylic at 60x40cm so I might use Topaz gigapixel to upscale the image if it was a heavy crop.
I also use a screen calibration tool (Spyder) if I'm doing prints. Printing is a whole 'nother topic that I'm a complete amateur at.
I have Photoshop but I only use it for image stacking for macro and I'm sure you could get cheaper tools to do that with.
I hope that helps.
European Greenfinch (Chloris Chloris)
Cambridgeshire July 2019
Nikon D7200, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6
f/6.3, 1/1000s, ISO 500, 500mm
After having a chat with @AchtungDrempels about Greenfinches, I trawled through my catalogue to see if I actually had any photos of one. It turns out I have four, which is remiss of me as they are beautiful birds.
In Greek mythology Chloris was a nymph associated with spring, flowers and new growth, it comes from the Greek word Khloros, meaning pale green. All of which seem apt for a green bird that I find mostly in woodlands and hedgerows.
They eat a wide range of fruits, seeds, flowers and some invertebrates, and I found this one on a bramble bush eating its flowers.
Hi
I'm seeing posts I have deleted appearing in my profile. Is there a way of hiding them if they can't be actually hard deleted?
Love the app by the way 👍
There are many habitat restoration projects where I live. You can visit hundreds of hectares of fens and woodland within a few K's of my home, and many more are created each year. It's not all doom. I was a birdwatcher for decades before I picked up a camera to photograph wildlife. It was a way to remember some of the beautiful things I had seen, photography for me doesn't replace the bird watching, it's an addendum.
You're doing very well with that setup, I am impressed 👍 And thanks for the photo.
I love that feeder as well, a great idea 😀 I'm not sure I wouldn't just have a parakeet feeder if we got them regularly lol
Thank you 😊
It was about this time I bought my Nikon D850 which, for many reasons, has much superior noise control than the Nikon D7200 I took this with. However, image processing technology has moved on so much that I find myself less concerned with noise now than ever before. I think, if I was taking this shot today, I would probably shoot at ISO 2000 on the D850 to give me the extra shutter speed. What I really need is f/4 500mm 😁
We get goldfinches but no chaffinches or greenfinches. I don't think there is enough woodland for them, mostly farmland, but there are a lot of teasles, which the goldfinches love for their seeds.
I would love to see any pictures you have of the greenfinches, they are such beautiful birds.
Glad you like it 😊
Male Eurasian Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs)
Rutland Nature Reserve, November 2019.
Nikon D7200, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6
f6.3, 1/40s, ISO 500, 380mm
Chaffinches are one of the most common UK small birds, but ones that don't visit my garden. So, I am always happy to have a chance to see them when I'm out and about and will always try and take a shot if an opportunity presents itself.
This one was a tricky task as sunset in mid-November in this part of the UK is 4:15pm, and it was already 4:30pm when I found the birds.
There was still a trickle of light left in the sky, cutting through the dense but almost bare trees as the birds prepared to roost.
I quickly realised I could either push the ISO to a point where the noise would really spoil the shot or attempt to shoot at a shutter speed well below the recommended 1/focal length for a long lense and ruin it with camera shake instead.
I shortened the lens to 380mm, braced myself against a tree as firmly as I could and wound the shutter speed down, watching the exposure needle creep towards the middle of the scale. Click...click...two shots and he was gone.
I looked at the exif data on the camera and saw 1/40s. I thought, that's probably the slowest shutter speed I have ever shot with this lens. And it was, until 10 seconds later when I got a lovely shot of a Dunnock at 1/30s.
You've gotta love image stabilisation!
Male Eurasian Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs)
Rutland Nature Reserve, November 2019.
Nikon D7200, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6
f6.3, 1/40s, ISO 500, 380mm
Chaffinches are one of the most common UK small birds, but ones that don't visit my garden. So, I am always happy to have a chance to see them when I'm out and about and will always try and take a shot if an opportunity presents itself.
This one was a tricky task as sunset in mid-November in this part of the UK is 4:15pm, and it was already 4:30pm when I found the birds.
There was still a trickle of light left in the sky, cutting through the dense but almost bare trees as the birds prepared to roost.
I quickly realised I could either push the ISO to a point where the noise would really spoil the shot or attempt to shoot at a shutter speed well below the recommended 1/focal length for a long lense and ruin it with camera shake instead.
I shortened the lens to 380mm, braced myself against a tree as firmly as I could and wound the shutter speed down, watching the exposure needle creep towards the middle of the scale. Click...click...two shots and he was gone.
I looked at the exif data on the camera and saw 1/40s. I thought, that's probably the slowest shutter speed I have ever shot with this lens. And it was, until 10 seconds later when I got a lovely shot of a Dunnock at 1/30s.
You've gotta love image stabilisation!
I've just noticed all my photos, and many from other members of this community, are no longer visible. I use Boost for most of my browsing, but it's the same on the website. I've posted on a support thread that another user raised about the same issue.
https://lemmy.world/comment/8247921
If your photos are missing as well it might be worth adding a comment for visibility.
Same, I have a lot of posts in c/birding that the images are now missing.
If I try to browse a link for one of the images I get:
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Thanks for the kind words.
The picture is called Waiting for her love. They pair for life and she looked like she was waiting for her mate to arrive after being out at sea since the last breeding season.
New Orleans, I bet you get some amazing wildlife in the bayou?
Wow, Chicago and NY, they are obviously far more cold tolerant than I gave them credit for. I'm expecting someone from Alaska along soon!
I have also seen two species of them in Rome, the rose-ringed and the monks (of which I have some poor quality photos) Climate wise, this is probably less surprising than northern Europe.
Exotic bird markets have long been a thing, so it may be that there have been many small introductions over the last millennia and perhaps further back, I found some references to Ancient Rome. Perhaps only more lately with warmer winters they have been able to establish proper breeding colonies. As an indicator species their movements might be quite telling.
Awesome! I love the fact that someone has taken the time to write this history and that the Hendrix mythology has made it into the book. Thanks for letting us know this exists 😀
That's really interesting, thanks Drempels.
London is 51.5° North and Düsseldorf is 51.2° so basically the same, but your winters are a lot colder than ours I imagine, meaning our parakeets can live in places further North, like Durham.
There are many rumours about how they got loose in the UK. One is a music video/film with Jimmy Hendrix at Elstree studios in Borehamwood where they were released as part of the production. There are quite a lot of them in that area so it may be true 🫨
Wow, those parakeets get everywhere! How far North in Europe are you? We get them occasionally in East Anglia but with greater frequency. In London I can show you dozens in some of the parks. They have even been seen as far North as Durham.
Lovely photos by the way 👍
Razorbill (Alca torda)
Bempton Cliffs, East Yorkshire, UK, May 2019.
Nikon D7200, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6
f/6.3, 1/800s, ISO 500, 420mm
f/6.3, 1/400s, ISO 500, 480mm
f/6.3, 1/1600s, ISO 800, 380mm
f/6.3, 1/2000s, ISO 800, 500mm
f/6.3, 1/640s, ISO 500, 420mm
Razorbills are truly fasinating birds and I think one of the most handsome. Their contrasting colouration and their bright yellow mouths and strong bills give them a really distinctive look.
They are member of the Auk family and are also known as the Razor-billed Auk, or Lesser Auk. Their closest relative is the now sadly exitinct Great Auk.
Like the other members of the Auk family, they spend most of their time out at sea, coming back to land for the breeding season. If you are ever lucky enough to watch them underwater you will see them using their wings as propulsion, in the same manner as a penguin.
Razorbills can be found around the coastlines of the North Atlantic and they generally live in large colonies. The Razorbill chooses only one partner for life and they only have one chick per year. They also don't start to breed until they are at least 3 years old and sometimes not until they are 5. They can also skip a breeding season as they get older. All this makes them very vulnerable to population decline.
I took these pictures at Bempton Cliffs on the East Yorkshire coast. Bempton and the surrounding Flamborough Head host England's largest onshore seabird breeding colonies, many species and over 300,000 birds. There can be as many as 20,000 pairs of Razorbills during the breeding season making it one of their largest colonies in the world.
From a photography stand point they can be a bit tricky. Like any black and white bird getting good exposure is always going to be a compromise. It is also difficult to get their eyes to standout from the surrounding feathers. However, they do seem to like to pose, they often display engrossing behaviours, and that yellow mouth makes an amazing contrast to the black head.
Cormorant(Phalacrocorax carbo) vs European eel (Anguilla anguilla)
Nikon D7200, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6
f/6.3, 1/2000s, ISO 500, 500mm
River Great Ouse, Camrbridgeshire, May 2019
This was another of those "right place, right time" situations. I walked a few miles to this spot on the river and was a little disappointed to see nothing on the water. I was about to head further down stream when this cormorant suddenly appeared. It had obviously been hunting in the rough waters of the weir and I hadn't noticed it.
Cormorants are sea birds, but in reality we get them in inland lakes and rivers almost all year round in the UK.
I took a couple of shots of the bird and then it disappeared again, surfacing only moments later with this frankly huge eel.
The European Eel is born in the Sargasso sea, a region of the North Atlantic ocean. It then migrates over the course of 300 days as a tiny larvae to the coasts of Europe .
When they reach the coast the larvae turn into tiny eels, which then move into a river. In the river they grow to adult size, taking anywhere up to 20 years, and then they head out to the Sargasso sea to breed and die.
In the UK a big eel is 5lb, though they can reach twice that, especially if they get trapped in a lake and can't return to breed. This was a big eel!
I watched the battle for about 15 minutes. The cormorant lost the eel a couple of times during the fight, but I suspect the initial attack had injured the fish, making its demise inevitable.
Avocet (Recurvirostra avosetta)
Nikon D7200, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6
f/6.3, 1/500s, ISO 500, 500mm Norfolk May 2019
f/6.3, 1/1600s, ISO 400, 500mm
This is the species that got me into bird watching. Over 40 years ago a teacher at my primary school was a member of the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) and told us stories, including the one about the symbol of the RSBP, the Avocet. A bird that was practically extinct in the UK by the 1940's.
At this point (early 80's) it was recovering but still a rare sight in the UK.
Fast forward a few decades and I had the pleasure of seeing hundreds of these birds for the first time on the North Norfolk coast. No longer rare, they are a UK conservation success story and one that I have been glad to be able to photograph.
Great Tit (Parus major)
Nikon D7200, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6
f/6.3, 1/500s, ISO 500, 500mm Cambridgeshire 2019
The largest Tit species found in the UK, its range covers almost the whole of the mainland, apart from the highest parts of the the Scottish highlands.
It can be a bit of a bully and I see it on our bird feeders pushing off other species including Starlings, which takes some doing!
It has a distinctive call that sounds very much like Teacher! Teacher!
Northern Wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe)
Nikon D7200, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6
f/6.3, 1/500s, ISO 500, 480mm
Orkney 2016
Male
Nikon D7200, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6
f/5.6, 1/800s, ISO 500, 350mm
Mull 2017
Female
Nikon D850, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6
f/6.3, 1/500s, ISO 500, 480mm
Isle of Lewis 2023
Male
Another absolute favourite bird that I only get to see when my travels take me to Scotland and the North of England. You can find them in Wales and in the South-West but I haven't seen them there. You will also need to be in the right location -moorland and heathland - and the correct time of year as the migrate to the UK in early March and leave back for Africa in October.
Dunnock (Prunella modularis)
Nikon D850, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6
f/6.3, 1/1250s, ISO 500, 460mm
May 2020.
A bird I think doesn't get the attention it deserves.
Dunnock comes from the old english, Dun meaning dingy brown and Ock, meaning small. Which I think is a rather unfair description. I have found them to be both beautiful and charming.
As you can see from these pictures they have a soft grey colour on the front that merges into to the brown and black feathers of the head and back. At the height of the breeding season the grey feathers can have a blue sheen.
I watched this bird doing a mating display on top of this post for at least 10 minutes. It was the first time I had seen this in this species and it was very entertaining as it did a skipping, wingless dance trying to attract the attention of a female.
Long-tailed Tit (Aegithalos caudatus) Nikon D7200, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6
f/6.3, 1/500s, ISO 500, 480mm
My favourite small bird. It really is tiny at about 14 cm (5 1/2 in) in length but that includes its tail which is about 60% of the total. It can also weighs as little as 5g (0.18oz) which is the same as a goldcrest, but is usually a little heavier, up to 8g (0.28oz). I have seen fledglings which are truly miniscule.
They tend to live in flocks and I have seen as many as 30 at a time but more commonly around 10-15.
You will almost always hear them before you see them, they make a high pitched pip sound as they keep in touch as they flit through the trees and bushes.
I see them almost everyday on our bird feeders in the garden and they cheer me up no end as they all try to fit on one feeder.
Atlantic Puffin (Fratercula arctica)
Nikon D7200, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6
f/7.1, 1/500, ISO 800, 500mm
Yorkshire coast 2019
Nikon D850, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6
f/6.3, 1/2500, ISO 500, 500mm
Northumberland 2020
Who doesn't love a Puffin? They are a species of Auk (Alcidae) and are pelagic, meaning they spend most of their life out at sea and come back to land only to breed. You can see them around much of the UK coast line from mid April through to Mid August. The best views I have had were in the North East of England and Scotland.
Nikon D850, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6
f/7.1, 1/1250, ISO 500, 500mm
Whitethroats for me are a hearld of summer. They migrate in large numbers to the UK from Africa and arrive in late spring, I tend to start seeing them from the end of April to mid May. They are a medium sized warbler with quite a punchy song. When they are setting up their breeding territories the males will have singing competitions whilst doing short displaying flights to attract a mate.
Nikon D7200, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6
f/7.1, 1/125, ISO 2500, 270mm
f/6.3, 1/500s, ISO 800, 500mm
Outside the UK now with the pink pigeon. Found only in Mauritius and the only species of pigeon to survive extinction on the island.
It was nearly extinct by 1991 with only 10 birds left. There's around 500 birds now thanks to conservation efforts and I was luck enough to see two different populations when I visted in 2018.
Mauritius is a great place to go for bird watching, especially as they have 28 species that can only be found there.
Starling (Sturnus vulgaris)
Nikon D850, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6
f/7.1, 1/2000s, ISO 800, 200mm
Every year, we have many pairs of starlings breeding in our locality. We have bird feeders in the garden all year round, but when the starlings bring their young to them, it is really hard to keep them filled.
As a consequence of their generally rowdy behaviour and competition for food, we often get squabbles breaking out. It also means I can get very close to them, as they are generally oblivious to anything but the food and their disputes.
Northern Gannet (Morus Bassanus)
Nikon D7200, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6
f/7.1, 1/1000s, ISO 400, 480mm
The biggest sea bird in the northern hemisphere and my favourite. I'm also a huge dinosaur fan and this photo always felt like a window into their evolutionary past, a brooding site of Dromaeosaurus albertensis bickering over nest space.
Sedge warbler
Nikon D7200, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6
f/6.3, 1/640s, ISO 640, 480mm
This was one of my first wildlife photos taken with my Nikon 200-500mm back in 2016.
I'd just left a bird hide and was walking on a boardwalk through the fen. I heard some cheeping sounds coming from behind me and I turned just in time to see this bird land in the reeds and call out to its chicks to be quiet. Instantly, the noise stopped, I took one shot and moved away so it could go to the nest and feed its young.
I later tried to identify the food in its beak. The white insect is probably a White Plume Moth (Pterophorus pentadactyla) which fits with the location. The orange insect I never discovered.
Extra pics
Back on the Yorkshire coast.
A juvenile peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) waiting on the rocks for its parents to feed it.
It had only recently fledged and was practicing flying. The chick that it is eating was passed to it in mid-air by the adult male. The female circled above keeping most of the other seabirds out of the immediate area. Anything that came too close for her liking was stooped on and driven off.
I felt incredibly lucky to get the shots I did because the fledgling was reasonably close and still unsure of itself in the air. The parents were moving so very quickly and circling at the edge of my sight. When they came closer it was practicably impossible to track their movements, let alone getting my lens on them.
Nikon D7200, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6
f/6.3, 1/2000s,ISO 640, 500mm
Common Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus)
Nikon D7200, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6
ISO 500, f/6.3, 1/2000s, 500mm
