Another repeat of yesterday as far as the weather was concerned. Migratory warblers were indeed present again but they swept across a location very quickly, spending less than 5 - 10 minutes at a site before moving on. Although the red-tinged early morning light near the bluff seems bright to my eye, it does not translate into being very bright according to my light meter. The cedars were gilded but even at 1250 ISO my shutter speed was still down under 1/200 sec, which is too slow for IS (hand-held) at 420mm. Missed a lot of shots. After it got brighter and my ISO went down and my shutter speed went up but I was so adept at missing shots that I just continued along that trajectory. Miss, miss, miss ... sorry, I have a cold. Does this park have, in fact, any birds at all that I can photograph? Rustle, oh look, a Chestnut-sided just beyond arm's length, switch to 1.5 meter AF from 3m AF, and it's gone. Oh look, a redstart ... damn camera won't auto-focus, oh ya, switch back to 3m, now that's better ... where's the redstart? They were just baiting me! Playing this little game of let's frustrate ol'four-eyes. What fun!
Sightings: Am. redstart (J) / Magnolia (J) / Myrtle (J) / Chestnut-sided (J) / Baltimore oriole / BT green / RE vireo / Cape May (J) / Gray catbird and the usual more common species. There were fewer species seen today than yesterday. I'll try again tomorrow morning. By the weekend and most of next week it will be warmer, more humid, with S,SE,E winds, which are not as favourable to the migration.
