Tag: Hairy Woodpecker

15 Minutes of Fame…by Brad Marks

As promised, it is time to pop another offering from Brad’s growing queue. He has been working overtime to bring you a number of new adventures, many of which we will be releasing during my fast approaching migration trip. To wet your whistle, here is an adventure which happens to be closer to home. Note, I thought monopods were just for whacking faster runners when wildlife decides to make a S’more out of photographers. Who knew there was another purpose ha.

Take it away Brad…

Usually, these posts include some sort of travel or exotic location where there just happens to be a bird or three worth photographing.  Brian heads to a bird sanctuary near the border in Texas.  Jan and I have normally just returned from a fantastic vacation location.  This time was a little bit different.

During our last trip to Colorado, I noticed my monopod (an aluminum Manfrotto 680B from the mid 2000’s) was slipping.  It was having trouble supporting the weight of my Nikon 200-500 plus the D300 with battery grip.  The middle section would slide down 4-5 inches, followed closely by the top section sliding 1-2 inches.  I tried to tighten the joints with the plastic tool included with the monopod; no luck.  When we arrived home, I discovered that parts are no longer available for this particular model.  I also found several people on-line that had simply tightened the joints beyond what may be prudent.  While that was not something I wanted to do, I wondered if the bolts had loosened because of usage.  I grabbed my favorite metric socket set and loosened all the joints to look for debris.  Finding none, I slowly tightened the bolts on the locking levers, about 1/16 of a turn each time.  Try the joint.  Adjust as necessary.  Repeat.  At some point I hit the magic friction point because the monopod stopped sliding with the lens/camera combo mounted on top.  And it didn’t feel like I was going to snap off the locking levers.  Now I had to verify the results.

Birds from Brad Mark's backyard

Hit the jump to see the results of Brad’s verification efforts!

Continue reading 15 Minutes of Fame…by Brad Marks

Fresh Hairy

Well, we just made our way back up to Minnesota for Linda’s three month Mayo follow up on her heart surgery.  Just need to make sure her upgrades are working as intended.  Unfortunately, looks like we will need to blow out of here as soon as possible as this place is planning to get 5-10 inches of the fluffy stuff  mixed with strong winds – starting just an hour or so after her last appointment.  Being Midwest natives, snow generally doesn’t get us too anxious – it’s the people that are not used to bad condition driving that breeds the concern.  On our way up we came upon an ominous scene as they were loading a body into the coroner’s vehicle on the side of the road.  According to the local Davenport news, the driver lost control exiting the highway – and that was on dry pavement.  No need to get too worried about things in the future – live in the now I say – and by now I mean showing off my latest +1 on the ol’ bird list.

Hairy Woodpecker found on lot in Brimfield 11/15/201

If you spend any time at all at Intrigued you are fully aware that although I may live in the now in the real world, I actually live years in the past in the cyber world.  Not sure exactly when I lost control of my photography queue, but it is a constant reminder that pressing the little shutter button on the camera is the easy part.  Getting captures moved to long term storage, flipping through the haul to figure out which ones are actually worthy of touching up, toiling away in the digital darkroom, getting the images uploaded and then ….well, then the most fulfilling part, adding words and showing them off to the world.  (Note, Ron used to make fun of me for being so far behind .. until he starting wildlife blogging and is now in the exact same boat hehehe).  Then there are times like today’s featured bird that are fresh out of the tin from an encounter a mere 10 days ago.  Yes, that was days and not years.

Hairy Woodpecker found on lot in Brimfield 11/15/201

Hit the jump to learn more about this surprise encounter.

Continue reading Fresh Hairy