Early Spring

4/17/2025

This post is going to cover a bit of a time range. Back in mid-March, I headed out to do a bit of owling. Regardless of the fact that we will probably still get snow in March, I think of it as the start of spring. Days are getting noticeably longer. Temps are roller-coastering up and down. Things are changing. Then my brother and I headed to Texas for some spring birding. You can read about the first part of that here. Then, last weekend, I made it back out to look for more spring migrants. So, there is about a month between the sets of photos.

The owling was done at Central Park. The one here in Carmel, IN; as opposed to the more famous one. This is a well-known location for Eastern Screech-Owl. There had been a lot of posts of a beautiful male red-phase owl online, and I headed over to check it out. I made three trips to see this bird. On the first trip, the bird poked its head out and then flew off into cover once it got dark. The second trip was more successful and had the bird flying from perch to perch. The evening ended with the male copulating with a female. Hopefully this leads to a successful nesting season; although I am not sure the two have ever fledged any young. The third and final trip was a complete flop. The male was not even present at his roost. While I have a few shots of the bird sticking his head out of his roost hole, my main goal was to get a perched shot of the bird. Since the bird only comes out after dark, this is a bit tricky. Mainly, it involves high ISO shots and a tripod. If you have ever seen me try to use a tripod, it is a bit of joke. I am clumsy with it. I prefer to hand-hold my shots. So, repositioning in the woods with a tripod is a disaster of me crashing into things and making a lot of noise. Which is an unintended segue into my next topic.

High ISO means a lot of noise. I am going to spare you all the iterations on things I looked at while working on processing photos. I had old versions of Topaz Denoise and DXO Pure Raw. I also have a current copy of LightRoom. Since I upgraded cameras, my copy of Pure Raw would no longer work. I tried the old copy of Topaz and the noise reduction in LightRoom. Neither did well. The shots were take around ISO 10k. So, they are very noisy. I upgraded my copy of Topaz to Topaz AI. The results were much better, but they left a bit to be desired. The feathering on the back of the owl is very fine. Topaz (and I tried a lot of variations on settings) would smooth out the feathers and remove all details. It just could not separate the detail from the noise. After returning from vacation and having more high ISO shots to process, this time of a Mottled Owl, I knew I needed to try one last thing. I upgraded my copy of Pure Raw. Finally, I got decent results out of the shot. They are not perfect, but they are acceptable and something I do not mind showing someone else.

I really liked the looks of the photo with the owl facing sideways in the hole. I knew this would look sharp as a black-and-white, and I enjoy looking at black-and-white versions of some of my shots. I think it turned out well.

The other upside to getting out in March to look for owls is that I got to watch the America Woodcock display. The park was packed with them, and it was nice to see and hear them display around the parking lot here. I could never track one down for a photo, but it was nice to see regardless.

Fast-forward to last weekend, and I am loading up before sunrise and heading south. I spent one day in Brown Co. and one day at Morgan-Monroe SF. I knew I was on the very edge of early arrivals, but I am pretty sure this was my only opportunity to get out for a while.

I was indeed early for most migrants, but I knew we should have a few species back. I heard a lot more than I saw, and I photographed even less. My targets were early warblers. I was hoping to come across a Blue-winged or Worm-eating, but I knew they were long shots. Pine Warbler was back, and I heard a couple reports of Louisiana Waterthrush. If the waterthrush were back, I figured I could find Yellow-throated Warbler and Northern Parula. At Brown Co., I had them all, but I spent so much time trying to track down waterthrush that I did not have time to look for much of anything else. While there, I saw Yellow-throated Warbler. I also heard Northern Parula, Pine Warbler, and an early Yellow-throated Vireo. I did not have much better luck at Morgan-Monroe. Chipping Sparrow and Eastern Phoebe were the only new additions to my early migrant list. By far, the bird I saw the most of this last weekend was waterthrush. I had two at Crooked Creek and at least three in Morgan-Monroe. So, pics are mostly of this species.

It looks like it will rain all weekend this next weekend. After that, I have one day the following weekend before I am out of town for a little bit. By the time I get back, it will be the peak of migration here. I will have to play some catch-up.

Thanks for reading,

Mike