Birds at Pt. Pelee

May brings many birds to Pt. Pelee National Park. The park is a point jutting into Lake Erie and it serves as a natural pathway for migrating birds. The whole forest is then full of birdsong like nowhere else I've been. The birds themselves are somewhat more elusive, but it's still pretty easy to spot many.

Lots of people come to photograph birds with tripods and expensive zoom lenses. I just have an Olympus C-770 digicam with 10x optical zoom, and before I felt I couldn't take decent photos of birds. They're too far to fill the frame, they often flee before I can take a photo, and it might be too dim for zoom in the forest. Now I accepted that they wouldn't fill the frame, taking photos even if they were far. I set "drive" to high speed, so I take a quick series of photos, with the hope that some wouldn't be blurred. When I got home I selected the best images and generally just cropped them with Jpegcrop.

I used to feel that birdwatching and serious bird photography was kind of weird, intellectualizing something that's simply fun to see, and through that somewhat ruining it. Through doing this and being among birdwatchers, it seems I might have been wrong; it doesn't seem like it makes birds less enjoyable. I guess it might even facilitate longer focus on the enjoyable input and so create more enjoyment of it.