Hunting Swans and Eagles

There's this strange shiny bright thing up in the sky this morning. It's almost reminiscent of... oh, wait! I remember now: it's called the sun! We haven't seen it in so long I'd almost forgotten. It's been days after days of totally cloudy, foggy, evenly-temperatured days and nights. In short, spring has been dismal but came in with a rush. So many nights above freezing means the snow goes away fast, floods are forcast in all the usual places, maple syruping is a dud, and my winter weekend plans for hunting swans and eagles were thwarted. I left them until too late.

Partly that was because the impetus for them came so late. It's always about the camera, and mine was state of the art when I bought it, but has developed some issues that newer ones are supposed to correct. My first real camera was a Pentax K-1000, manual everything, ability to add filters and lenses, and using costly 35mm film. Well, it's costly when you do things like shoot 36 rolls of it on vacation. I had what my ego wants to think of as the usual luck with a ratio of bad and good pictures. That was the only reason I was even tempted to go digital - erasing the awful ones, only showing off the good ones. Even so, I resisted for many years.

Once I received my share of the inheritance from Lylah, I spent part of it on a Sony HD camcorder which also took still pictures. It became my do-everything camera. Typical digital takes the picture a second or two after you push the button. It pauses to ask itself first about focus, aperture, shutter speed, and while it's doing all that, the subject you were trying to shoot has moved, possibly even gone away. I needed to go back to the good ol' single lens reflex like my K-1000. Digital SLRs are expensive. I had to wait. Besides, they weren't that good yet.

Actually, Bambi had a hand in my getting my new camera. To get through the time between the accident and the still-awaited final payout, I had to cash in a CD. It was of course for more than what I absolutely needed, and once all is settled, the balance will do more good paying down my credit card than gathering today's interest. But meanwhile new possibilities existed. One of them included a shopping trip, resulting in a Nikon D-5000, a digital SLR camera with 12+ megapixel pictures, continuous-shutter possibilities, and a gazillion more bells and whistles. Hopefully, the very last camera I'll ever want or need.

If, of course, I actually learn how to use it. Yikes! The manual needs its own translator. I sat down with it on a quiet Sunday afternoon to read it through and get acquainted with my camera. All there? Check. Charge battery? Check. Come back later, nothing's going to happen without the battery. Now, go into ____ menu to set time and date.

Uh, the which menu? I find it where? And maneuver through it how? Oh, there it is...and oops, it disappeared! How do I find it again? Now "up" does... the wrong thing, obviously. I can just cut this short and say it took two whole frickin' hours to get to the point where I could hit the button and take a picture of my living room!

(Add to pet peeves list: badly written instruction manuals.)

OK, I can finally take a picture with everything on full automatic. Big whoop. It's time to complicate things a bit and get a 300mm lens for the camera. Actually, a 70-300 zoom. The camera came with an 18-55, giving me wide angle to standard. I needed the telephoto, modest as it is, for all the wildlife shooting I like to do, plus macro capabilities for those close ups of flowers and stuff.

This shouldn't be rocket science. I'm used to whipping through different lenses with the old K-1000. Push, twist, remove, line up new, insert, twist, click. Done as fast as you can read the words. So next weekend I pack everything up, load it in the car, pick up Steve, and we head over to Monticello to find the park where the lady feeds the trumpeter swans that spend winters there. I haven't actually tried putting on the new lens, however. I just figure no problem.

Yeah, right.

When you change lenses, they have to be lined up just so before you begin the insert and twist part. They come with a colored spot on the camera body and one on the lens. When those line up, it's right. I'd put on and taken off the regular lens. But where the heck was the spot on the 300? Nothing! Anywhere! At this point I'm sitting in the front seat of my car, parked about a hundred feet from the riverbank below which the swans rested by the thousands. I'm trying one position, then another. No go. Can hear, not see the swans. Other people are coming, shooting, leaving. Not us. I finally settle on the original lens, hoping it'll actually do me some good. Just as we open the car doors to set out, something startles the flock, and we glimpse through the trees two thousand or so trumpeter swans lifting and flying away.

Figures!

When we get there, about a half dozen remain. As we watch and try to shoot, a few more stop in, two here, one there. I decide to go back to the car, dig through to find the instructions sheet for the 300, and see whether, all by myself and the pressure off, they'll make any sense. Unfold, spread out, find English. Browse, browse, browse... Got it! This other mark, not a spot but a line, the one partway up the barrel, showing the number your lens is zoomed out to, that's the one that doubles to line up the lens and camera body! How idiotic! But it works, and I head back down to see if I can get any better shots. I can.

And just as I start to use the telephoto, the remaining flock is up and away.

I promise myself to return next year in winter, when the river is more frozen and they have fewer options of where to be than they do on this gorgeous spring day. The camera will be working better for me by then.

It better!

With spring finally taking hold, my dad's feeling of cabin fever intensified. He's been so cooped up all winter, unable to navigate ice and snow safely. I'd heard about the bald eagles congregating down along the river in Red Wing, and asked if he'd like to go on a road trip the next Sunday, weather permitting. I felt safe making this offer, now having the replacement car, reliably new and with real heat in it. He was enthusiastic, so we made plans. Part of mine included studying my camera more so I could now do things like setting the shutter release on "continuous" and making the overall setting one that selected for higher shutter speed.

We left just after lunch, planning to be back in time for supper. It would be about a 170 mile round trip. While it was often overcast, it cooperated by staying dry. Roads were good, as long as you avoided potholes. Patches of brown were appearing as snow cover dropped, though they were mostly grasses and brush rather than actual bare ground. He was glad to get out, enjoying the passing scenery even with his very limited vision. The park was easy to find, and the promised assistants were there with their fancy high-powered telescopes pointed on the single eagle in the area.

Yep, single eagle. Spring had come so fast that the bulk of the eagles had scattered, defending nests and territories, ample fishing with miles of open river available to them. The single eagle was wa-a-a-a-a-y-y-y-y-y-y-y over there, a smudge amongst solid tree branches with a lighter smudge on the top end. You really needed the telescopes.

We got out of the car to stretch legs. I never even bothered to pull the camera from its box. Instead we sat, watching people come and peer and go, boats back down the public access ramp to fish in the river, and just enjoy a view of open water. I pointed towards the eagle, but of course he couldn't see it. We agreed it had been a pleasant ride anyway, and headed home.

Turning off Hwy. 95 onto Pleasant Valley Road, the short cut home, I pulled over onto the narrow shoulder. There in a dead snag in the pasture behind the fence was a lone bald eagle, sitting there elegantly framed by blue sky. I rolled Daddy's window down, pointed him at the bird until he saw where it was, dug out the camera, and got off several shots through the open window. Of course, as soon as I put the camera down, off he flew. But at least, this time Daddy knew he'd actually seen an eagle, even if we'd had to come back to 5 miles from home to do it.

Next thing I have to learn is how to load the pictures into my laptop from this camera. You'll know it worked when there's a posting with pictures.