Bad Cameras and Coopers Hawk
Well, it's been a heck of a year for cameras around here... It took forever to get our streaming bird cam up and stable, but she's finally running like a dream now. (Oh! Dag nab it! I forgot to mention that some time ago Mrs. CCA spotted the classic owl claw marks in the snow which means that if anyone was watching our cam that night (we call it Backyard Night Fishing or BNF), they probably would have seen the ghostly sweep of an owl snatching up some poor mouse.) Anywho... (Where was I?) Uhhh... Yeah... We were talking about a tough year for cameras... Let's see... The Canon Eos took an unexpected salt-water bath and is now walking the streets of glory. Then the Olympus 2100 finally turned turtle after a decade and thousands of images. And lastly, the diminutive Vivitar morphed into a paperweight... But not to fret... We still have a scanner and those pesky plate reprints from the 1916 "Birds of New York". Check out this Coopers Hawk piece...
Not bad... But how about if we use our microscope to take a good look at the hawks head? (Fascinating to look at the print technology of 1916 up close.)
And who actually drew the original plates? Why it's none other than Louis Agassiz Fuertes (1874-1927)...
But there's also nothing like the real thing...
So let the cameras knuckle under... We'll get by just fine! (Besides, we still have the Novabird remote camera, the flip video, the cell phone camera, and two video cameras...) Yup... Plenty of lens mauling yet.
See you by the feeders,
CapeCodAlan
Cornell Ornithology Laboratory: Inside Birding
Cornell Ornithology Laboratory: All About Birding
Comments
That "real thing" was in your back yard, if I guess correctly. It's shame you have so little joy in what you do here, Alan. (Sarcasm!) Your joy shows all over your posts and makes them even more interesting!
Posted by: Josie | January 15, 2010 11:12 PM
Hi Josie,
Thanks for the comment!
Yup, the real thing really was in our backyard...
CCA
Posted by: CapeCodAlan
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January 17, 2010 6:34 AM