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Cedar Waxwing

December 19th, 2006

Well, I finally saw one. Several, in fact. I’ve wanted to see the Cedar Waxwing for some time now, and frankly had not even heard that they existed in my home town until recently. It’s as if every time I come home, I discover new species of birds that seem exciting, but when I mention them, everyone says, “Oh yeah, they’re everywhere and have been around for as long as I can remember.” A few years ago that included the Stellar’s Jay, a very nice crested Jay, one of the first subjects of my new camera (before the nosebleed hit).

This time my birdwatching is newly affected by the acquisition of a new video camera, one with 30x optical zoom (almost twice my digital camera’s range). That advantage, however, is mitigated by the small image size (720 x 480), making it roughly the same–and transferring to the blog has problems due to interlacing (the subject and camera shot must be still for a good part of a second for a clear shot to be delivered). So let’s begin with the two shots given by the video camera:

121806-Cedar Waxwing1-450

121806-Cedar Waxwing2-450

…and contrast those with the digital camera shots, which also come with enlargements if you click on them. The quality is much nicer:

121806-Cedar Waxwing3-450

121806-Cedar Waxwing4-450

One good point about the video camera: you get a much better selection of shots and angles due to the continuous filming.

In this particular case, I only had a clear shot of the birds for a minute or so before they flew off. I will try again tomorrow to see what I can get of them and what other birds may be viewable as early on as I can manage to drag myself out of bed…

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  1. ykw
    December 20th, 2006 at 02:52 | #1

    These look Very nice ! Is there software that takes multiple frames and combines them to reduce noise and increase sharpness?

  2. Meg
    May 20th, 2007 at 16:17 | #2

    Beautiful pictures! We have several cedar waxwings flitting about in the large tree top just outside our 3rd story window. They really are striking birds. Thanks for sharing. :-)

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