Bird fly high by the light of the moon
Saturday, 19 March 2011
Jokerman dance to the Nightingale tune
Took this tonight, at extreme focal length and on a timer etc. Being techy (as in technologically-minded, dull and boring, as opposed to mildly irritated) for a moment, I used a neat function called Live View, where the mirror assembly flips up and the screen shows the light path. You can zoom in to 10x to aid in manually tweaking the focus, so the screen showed the equivalent of 10,000mm of focal length. At this extreme magnification, the slightest wobble threw it out. More interesting though was that you could see the moon moving, literally tracking across the screen. Or maybe we're moving, not too hot on the whole science thing, but it is amazing nonetheless. The tripod wasn't moving, or at least not independently of Planet Earth anyway, but the Moon was. Maybe. Even more interesting than that, though a hard act to follow, was that every now and again a Passerine could be seen flying across the face of the Moon. If you ever wanted to see nocturnal migration in action, tonight is the night. I had Bluethroat, Red-backed Shrike, Thrush Nightingale, Wheatear (finally), Short-toed Lark......
Bird fly high by the light of the moon
Bird fly high by the light of the moon
Very smart - too tecky for me to understand how you got it, but very cool.
ReplyDeleteI saw migrating passerines too, while being geeky and taking photos of the moon. At least 8 flew across in about 15 minutes. Didn't hear a single call, though. Most were Bluethroats but I also had Subalpine Warbler and a probable tristis Chiffchaff.
ReplyDeleteI loked at the moon through the scope but it was too bright. So I switched to the planet next to it. Saturn, with its rings, and the black gaps between the rings and the planet clearly visible. Fantastic. But I didn't see any birds flying across Saturn.
ReplyDeleteWell done on remaining cautious with the probable tristis. No shame in that.
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