martinlucas's Journal

Though there's a couple of inches of slushy snow on the ground this morning, there can be no doubt that spring is here. The pussy willows are blooming and temperatures will move into the 60s later in the week.

This year I will once again focus on my Bogus Run project, and am hoping to add quite a number of bird species to the inventory. I will continue to study pollinating insects, and will try to add other invertebrates, particularly those that may be sand country specialists. I'd like to inventory some of the aquatic species, especially fish, but we'll see if I really get around to that.

My first big push will be neo-tropical migrants and other springtime birds -- should be an interesting challenge.

Spring 2018 was slow to arrive, but it's finally starting to break through. Usually service-berries are in bloom by now, but this year the willows are still only getting started.

My sister Donna has been upgrading her photography equipment, and has kindly loaned me some of her now eclipsed but still excellent gear. One item of particular interest for this project is a Tamron zoom telephoto lens. I've only taken it out twice, but have already gotten some decent photographs -- and though it's a few years old it seems to work well with the Nikon D750. It's rugged too, it doesn't make me too nervous out in the bush.

So I'm going to seize on this opportunity and try to photograph lots of birds this spring, especially neo-tropical migrants. That means I'll likely miss some of the macro action, but it'll be new and exciting for me. When practical, I'll also have a macro on hand, but there's no escaping that I usually pick one setup and quarry to 'focus' on and tend to push other things to the back-burner. In fact, that sense of quiet concentration is one of the things I love about documenting nature through photography.

It's stormy and rough outside today, but that low pressure system is coming in from the south with warm air in front -- and there will be little wings in those winds.