Playing with the Canon G-11

Well, I was having such fun exploring the macro capabilities of my new camera, the Canon G-11, it was hard to get off the porch. I've lost track of which of these photos are whose. Probably most are Phoebe's.
A Gerbera daisy. Woweee.

More gladiola naughty bits.

A fabulous painted rose from a birthday bouquet from our friends at Lakeside. Those guys do it up right.

A 20x zoom got me up close to a very cool stained glass window on The Owl House. Dunno why it's called that, other than the owls all over it. Bet Susan would like to install a window like this! I like that he looks so cranked off.
Macro and wide angle both. Here's a whole house.

And here's my little family, everyone in focus. Heck, the whole scene's in focus!

I've asked Phoebe when she becomes a supermodel, just to send the money home. And not to take it seriously; just do the shoots and send the money home and save some for your education.

Gawrsh, Bill's on the iPhone. Whaddya know.

More Bacon Bits, these by Phoebe:

overlong toedynails, I know, I know. I'm going to clip them this week. It's just our favorite thing to do. Can't you tell?

And a pebbly rough jellybean nose. If you're seduced by these photos, click for a product description of the Canon G-11.

If you decide to buy the camera, I'd be much obliged if you use this link to do it. It gets you to B & H Photo's page, where you'll find the lowest price and best service for your purchase.

A psychedelic paisley fishy in a sushi restaurant (not, fortunately, slated for the platter.) Hot news flash: now identified as a mandarin goby (really a dragonet) Synchiropus splendidus, by Myamuhnative and Tai haku. Thanks, folks! It's native to the Indo-Pacific Ocean.

Like many gorgeous ocean reef fish, the mandarin dragonet is heavily collected, heavily traded, and has lousy survivorship in captivity. It takes a specialized diet of copepods and often starves to death in captivity. Sigh. One more reason I could never keep a saltwater tank--too many sadnesses in the getting. Good luck, little dragonet. Looks like you're at the end of your biological road, in a sushi restaurant somewhere in Ohio.

And a couple of happy little monkeys.

Every once in awhile you meet a dog you could just scoop up and take home, no questions asked. Nugget is such a dog. A ChiWeenie (chihuahua x dachshund), saved from a pound when he could fit in your palm. A rare dog, cuddler supreme, with a terrific sense of humor and a coat like satin. He smelled like sunshine, like someone else I know.

Having grown up with a beloved but dour little dachshund, I think Nugget's sense of humor and joie d'vivre comes entirely from the chihuahua side. I highly recommend the combination!


He is thoroughly doted on by our wonderful friends Beth and Kevin. As he should be. One of the luckiest little dogs I've ever met. From the pound to the lap of love. It was so great to hang with them, such lovely people. They understand about dogs, and why we need them around. They also completely understood why The Bacon had to accompany us for our week at Lakeside. Thanks to Wendy for finding us a place that would waive the "no pets" rule.

It was a good thing Chet Baker was waiting for me back at our cottage. Kevin and Beth would have had a prime suspect in Nugget's sudden disappearance otherwise.

In other news, Ohio Wildlife Center just called with news on Dee Dee the big brown bat. Remember HER?!? Well, she's still in rehab, having refused to fly or flown only weakly until just a couple of weeks ago. But now she's flying well and will be transferred to a flight cage tonight. Then she's got three weeks of conditioning before she can be released.

They've got her rations cut to 10 mealworms/day but she's still 23 grams--way heavy for a big brown bat. Pregnant? Only time will tell! I really hope she's not pregnant, because if she delivers, she'll have to be kept until the baby starts flying. Arrrgh. But she and Darryl were very close, and she was housed with another male bat at OWC until May, and she probably mated last fall too, so all I can say is stay tuned!

I can't tell you how happy this makes me, to think that out of all the bat troubles, Dee Dee might once again flitter across the Marietta skies. Keep your fingers crossed for her.

This is me, getting my dogfix. I need a dogfix about every ten minutes. Pass the ChiWeenie! Hold the mustard!

The New Camera Yahoo's

The first photo I took with my new camera.

We spent last week at Lakeside, Ohio, giving talks for their summer Chautauqua. This thoughtful man brought something nice along with him, as Father Time decreed that I would trudge a little farther into my fifth decade on July 24.

That somethin'-somethin' was a new camera for me. You see, when we visited Yellowstone National Park back in June, I left the park a little souvenir: My Canon Digital Rebel XTi, the faithful workhorse that has been delighting you all for the last four years. We were watching a peregrine and her chicks on a distant cliff, and there were bighorns nursing their lambies, and an Audubon's warbler close by, and I got excited and started pulling out optics and scopes and digiscoping stuff and in the kerfuffle I left my poor Rebel with its wonderful wide-angle lens on a low stone wall. And though we realized it right away and raced back 20 minutes later, that was enough leeway for somebody to steal it. What...a...fleepin'....bummer. Yeah, I reported it immediately at a nearby ranger station, and I reported it to Xanterra, the concessionaire at Yellowstone, but nobody ever turned it in. They took it home instead. Sure hope they liked my larkspur photos, the rat finks. I mean, what kind of creep could download photos of my kids and a bunch of wildflowers and bison and not want to return the camera to its mom? I just can't think about that.

Luckily I still had my newer Canon Digital Rebel XSi with the 70-300 mm. image-stabilized telephoto lens, so we finished out the trip shooting like mad as usual. But oh, I missed having two cameras, one for landscape and one for wildlife. I felt naked without having a camera on each shoulder.

Fortuitously, at that very spot, a semi-pro photographer had excitedly shown us his Canon Powershot G-11, the Cadillac of point-and-shoot cameras. He told us that every National Geographic photographer carries one; every pro working the Olympics has one. They use it for crowd shots, grab shots, everything. It has 10 mpxl with RAW capability; is crazy fast and sharp, and it's a delightful little chunk of metal in your hands. It was clear this guy with his big howitzer lenses was nuts about his little point-and-shoot.

So that's what Bill gave me for my birthday last week, a Canon G-11. And I started hitting that shutter button and every time I put it down Phoebe grabbed it, so we'll take you on the test drive together.

Wide angle. Everything's in focus. Chetty's watching for passing doggehs he can snorf at.

I missed my garden so much I brought it with me. Oh, look. Gladiolus bits.

Oh, and look. Grains of zinnia pollen.

See, I've never had macro capability, much less a camera that figures out when I need macro capability and automatically switches to it. I had the lens practically touching the flower for these shots.

The whole bouquet. Nothing dresses up a sunporch like homegrown glads. There's Chetty's leash, too. Whenever anyone said "walk," he'd dance out and grab it off the table and put it on the offender's knee. Oh, I love a talking dog.

The Canon G-11 has crazy MonkeyCam capability. You can swivel the big, bright LED screen so it faces BACKERDS, and you can point the camera right at yourselfs and see what you're shooting and get fabulous, hugely flattering pictures like this.

Oh, look. Phoebe's contact lens. She took dozens of dreamy self-portraits, as a newly minted teenager will. She turned the LED viewfinder around, stuck the camera in her eye and took a photo. I think she has 16 eyelash mites.


Mether. Take a picture of me, Chet Baker. Here, I will pose for it. And then let's go for another walk. I like walking on the lead here at Lakeside. It makes me feel important, and many nice older people stop and ask if I am one of those Boston Bulls. I like being called a Boston Bull.

I see you are still playing with your new toy. I will give you one more pose. But I hope that you know we could take much more interesting photos outside, if we went for a walk. A WALK. I am sending you a mental picture of us taking a WALK.

I think that if I concentrate hard enough, you will take me for a WALK. Hmm hmm hmm hmm. Walk, walk, walk, walk, walk. Picture of me and you going for a walk. Hm hm.

All right, Chetty. We'll take you and the Canon G-11 for a WALK. Until Thursday, arribaderchy. And happy birthday to me! Thanks, babe. Bitchin' birfday present.

Astute readers (and that means all of you) will notice that there are hotlinks to these products right in the text. Hit a blue link, and it will take you to B&H Photo's product description page for that camera or lens. Decide that you want to buy it right then and there, or come back later and buy it by clicking on my link, and I get a little bitty kickback from B&H. It won't cost you a cent more; in fact, I've done all the research for you and found the fabulous cameras and lenses and the lowest price and best service around. It'll just help buy Baby some shoes.

Orphaned Birds: To Love or Not to Love?

I got a thoughtfully posed question from a reader named Kathleen on June 22. I started to write my typical three-paragraph reply, then decided to save it for this post. It was that good a question, and it's something that's always in my mind as I work with these birds.

Kathleen wrote: The rehab centre I'm at has a policy of being as hands-off as possible with the animals to prevent socialization to humans, and we do our best to find same-species nestmates or role models, or barring those, at least a mirror to keep babies company. Julie, I've been reading your blog for a long time, and it seems like you take the opposite approach, being very hands-on with the young ones. Do you find that the babies you raise still go right back to being wild once they're on their own? Are they any different from young birds raised the way they are at the centre I'm at?

My answer:

Thanks so much for asking the question, Kathleen, and for asking it so thoughtfully.

I just got back from cuddling two lost wild turkey poults to sleep--they were inconsolable until I held them against my chest. They were cold and distressed, having been without their mother since before dawn, and I sensed that they needed not solitude but warmth, darkness, and a cuddle. So I held them to my chest and their strident peeps turned to purrs. Their eyes closed and they drifted off into a deep sleep, their dear little heads drooping. Two lice crawled up my neck and into my hairline and I dug them out and squished them but kept holding the poults close to my heart. It was like the silence after turning off a smoke alarm, so thick and lovely. Even so, I had spent the entire morning trudging the woods looking for their mother, and at that moment I was waiting for a call back from a breeder so I could place these birds with an heirloom bronze mother turkey. While I waited, I rigged up a heat lamp in the corner of their tank. They need to grow up as turkeys, not as imprinted people-turkeys. I know that much about turkeys. You don't fool around with waterfowl, raptors, or gallinaceous birds, or you're likely to end up with an 18-pound gobbler trying to mate with your knee.

Songbirds are different. I've been raising orphaned songbirds since 1982, and have had quite an array of foundlings successfully find their way back to the wild despite having had loving care from humans to start their lives (or restart them, after losing contact with their natural parents). Birds I have raised have paired with wild birds, raised their own young, and returned to visit in successive years. Cardinal, catbird, cedar waxwing, rose-breasted grosbeak, mourning dove, wood thrush, phoebe...the list goes on. Having been a small-scale rehabber, I have rarely had the good fortune to be able to group young of the same species or place them with conspecifics who will raise them as some larger rehab centers do. So I indulge myself, giving them the same kind of unfettered love I give my children or my domestic pets. I name them and I murmur to them. And when the time comes to release them, I kiss them on their heads and sever our ties very gently, over a period of weeks or even months. Three ruby-throated hummingbirds I raised stayed around the yard for a month and a half after release, coming back for feedings for three days, and after that simply visiting with me. They all migrated on schedule, and all three returned the following spring, resplendent in full ruby gorgets. They still knew their names, but there was no denying that they were full-fledged members of the hummingbird tribe, having flown across the Gulf of Mexico twice and found their way back to my doorstep. I'd call that a successful release.

Having done this for 28 years, I don't believe that refraining from becoming emotionally involved with the birds one raises; refraining from naming them or stroking them or murmuring endearments to them keeps them from identifying you as their mama. I think it's OK, and even desirable, to openly let an orphaned bird or animal know it is loved. I think the clinical approach is just a thin, semantic mask for a bond that must be present in order for a human to devote herself to the care of an orphaned bird. We're in hazy territory, I know, but I strongly believe that even a hummingbird needs to know someone cares for it and loves it. I believe they do better when they are loved. I don't think it hurts to sneak a nuzzle now and then, nor do I believe it shows disrespect for their wildness, as I've been admonished. Do you carry it around like a lapdog? Of course not. You feed it and show it you care, and leave it to its own devices in between.

I maintain that it is difficult if not impossible to keep from bonding with a bird you're feeding on the half-hour all day long. I don't know how it works for you, but that bond is what keeps me going, what allows me to turn my life completely upside down in service to a half-ounce bird, feeding it dawn to dusk, shopping at the grocery store in the middle of the night so I can be home to feed it. Why deny it exists? There's no need to get anthropomorphic about it, but why be coldly clinical about it? I suspect that such hands-off policies are aimed squarely at a rehabilitation organization's viewing public, so that these wild animals are not treated as or perceived as pets. I understand that and fully support it. They aren't pets. They're wild creatures slated for release and independence in their natural habitat. When one has a visiting public for which to model behavior, it's best that wildlife rehabilitation be presented that way.

But it's not how I work, and I'd submit that there are many ways to skin this cat. We're all working toward a successful release, but with songbirds, I believe we have the luxury of being a bit more relaxed about the imprinting issue than we do with raptors, waterfowl or galliniformes. Working alone or with the help of my daughter, I have been able to indulge my maternal instincts, shower my charges with love, and still keep in mind that they are ultimately wild and will return to the wild. Do my foundlings leave more slowly? Doubtless. And I believe that every minute, hour and day that a bird has to develop its flight muscles, foraging and survival skills and devote to simply figuring out how to live wild gives it an advantage over one that is simply abandoned when the rehabilitator thinks it's time. Release is a very dicey thing. Knowing when a bird is truly able to be self-sufficient is a skill that takes awhile to acquire. I'd doubt very much that most rehabilitators have the luxury of following an orphaned mourning dove along its path to independence for 60 days, as I did with Libby.

She found her own kind; she billed and cooed and preened with a same-age juvenile dove; she stopped landing on our heads; she became wild and wary and finally, while we were away on vacation, she left, perhaps for good. Or perhaps not. I look for her every day, and should I be blessed enough to lay eyes on her again, I'll know her, just as I knew the hummingbirds, the waxwing, the cardinal, the phoebe, the grosbeak and the wood thrush. It is a magical thing to be a bird's mother, to love it fully and to let it go, and to see it return of its own free will until it doesn't need to any more.

So, Kathleen, I can't say how it goes for the birds raised at your center, never having witnessed their release. I can't say how they differ from the birds I've raised. While they may not go "right back" to the wild, I can say that most of mine make it, having had the luxury of letting their instincts kick in slowly on their own, with full backup from their earthbound mama. I encourage them to linger, keeping food around at all times, but their wildness inevitably takes over, as they learn to take cues from the wild birds all around them. I go from Mom to just another human unit to be avoided, until that magic day weeks, months or years after release when I am approached by a free-living wild bird who comes up for a moment, just to say hello. For the months of effort and concern I've expended on its behalf, there could be no sweeter benediction.