Day 7 - First snowfall
The first snowfall has blanketed the lower Hudson Valley enhancing the sightings of early Winter birds. Perhaps one of the prettier species to show up in December in good numbers is the White-throated sparrow.
Nikon Z8 with Nikon Z100-400 lens. 1/1250 sec, f/7.1, ISO 6400 Exposure compensation + 1 2/3 stops
Our bird club conducted its annual Christmas Bird Count on Saturday and the two most prolific birds were the Dark-eyed junco (featured on an earlier date in this blog) and the White-throated sparrow. There are two color morphs of this sparrow….a tan-striped variation and a white-striped such as this one. Interestingly, the tan-striped will generally mate with a white-striped. The vast majority of these birds spend their summer on the breeding grounds in Canada and venture south to visit us in the winter.
Tech Tip - Just a quick tip today regarding photographing in the snow. The bright white snow will generally cause the meters in cameras to underexpose the image and the camera reads the light of the overall image as being much brighter than it actually is. Therefore, it is wise to “overexpose” your shot. This is most easily done by setting exposure compensation on your camera to somewhere in the range of plus one to plus two. Check your camera’s user manual for specifics on how to accomplish this.
To learn more about Exposure Compensation, click the button below to take you to a YouTube lesson with one of my favorite Photo gurus, Steve Perry. (Just click the skip button on the site to avoid the annoying ads!)
