Changi 19Jan11

From Con

Just catching up with the Dec 19^th outing to Changi Cove with Subaraj, Simon and Richard Carden.

By the time we got into the cove and I got my camera out the the car and down to the beach it was already quite late.  I shot from about 11:20 to 12:15, so the light was already rather harsh.

I used a 600mm lens with 2x TC and a 1.5 crop factor camera body for an effective focal length of 1800mm which in terms of magnification is 36X.  All these pictures are 50% crop so that makes the magnification 72X definitely within scope range!  But the images surely suffer a loss of sharpness due to variety of factors that always plague such high magnification.

Our group counted 9 White-faced Plovers.  My goal was to photograph the closest one so I could get some reasonable detail.  I wound of crawling on the sand to get closer.  We never disturbed the flock and the never flew.  I might have gotten a bit closer still, but the group was waiting and getting anxious to go, so we left.  This sort of thing is best done along or with people who aren't hungry.

I'm showing all my shots of one particular individual bird next to what I believe is a Kentish Plover.  This serves to illustrate two points the the Bakewell / Kennerley papers ... that the White-faced Plover is slightly larger than a Kentish Plover, and the legs are pale and pinkish.