I know, right? It’s quite amazing how far they travel and how they find their way! Another pair (probably even the same pair!) was seen at the exact same spot last year as well.

I do not mind at all! I used a EOS R10 with a Tamron SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD G2 at 600 mm, f/8.0 and a shutter speed of 1/2000s. ISO was set automatically by the camera. Then some light editing in Lightroom afterwards.

I started last year with a really inadequate camera and lens. Only this year did I get a better setup. What kinds of lenses do you have?

Thanks a lot!

Thank you :-)

Yeah, anything above f/8.0 tends to be a bit too soft for me at 600 mm. At the lens’ lowest focal length of 150 mm, using f/6.3 tends to yield the sharpest results. Also remember that the larger the aperture, the smaller the number (f/6.3 is a larger aperture than f/8.0).

The effect is greatly exaggerated by the focal length, yes. The background is mostly trees that are like 20 metres away.

And yeah, photographing birds can be a bit tricky. So fast!

Thank you very much! :-)

I used a Canon EOS R10 with a Tamron SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD G2 at 600 mm and f/8.0. Larger apertures aren’t that sharp with this lens, unfortunately.

Common in the grand scheme of things, sure. But common for me? Nope. Especially the Firecrest is only rarely seen around here so it was exciting to finally be able to see it and also hear it sing :-) Same for the linnet, it isn’t all that common either. The Common Redstart for example is also quite uncommon here, despite its name. You mostly only see Black Redstarts around here.

Where are you from that they’re so common where you are?

I made !birding@lemmy.world if you’re interested :-)

And you’re right about Merlin! I never fully trust it either, but in this case I just used it to confirm that the call I heard was, indeed, a firecrest. I don’t hear them too often so I wasn’t sure. I ended up seeing it as well.

But I’ve had Merlin misidentify things before. It heard part of a Song Thrushes singing and thought it was an oystercatcher 😬

Edit: wrong link

Merlin is great though you really have to take the results with a grain of salt at times. I’ve had it identify part of a Song Thrushes singing as an Oystercatcher, for example. But the majority of IDs are generally correct.

I would generally agree with you, just that I go there almost every day (I live basically right next to it) and have never seen them there. I have seen these ornamental birds in other places before (such as Muscovy Ducks, Peafowl, Mandarin Ducks …) but never Yellow-Billed Ducks and never around where I live. So I honestly have my doubts about them in particular having been placed there intentionally.

I also checked Ornitho.de (the German eBird equivalent) and the only sightings of this duck in my region this year were from me (10.06.23) and someone who saw one of them around 10 km away on 06.06.2023.

Egyptian Geese are pretty common here as well, though they’re not ornamental and are an actually somewhat established species here (just like Canada Geese which aren’t native to Germany but can be found everywhere). They can be pretty aggressive towards other birds, though.

There can never be enough duck pics, I agree! quack

Was hast du denn für eine Kamera derzeit? Ich war einige Zeit mit der Panasonic DC-FZ82 für knapp 300€ unterwegs. Macht zwar nicht die allerschärfsten Bilder, hat aber einen 60x-Zoom und ist leicht. Gegen eine DSLR mit richtigem Objektiv kommt sie aber natürlich nicht an.

Thank you! :-) But I had a nice model to work with, makes taking nice photos easier haha

Das habe ich mir fast gedacht. Buntspechten läuft man wirklich immer über den Weg. Spechte finde ich allgemein aber alle super :-)

Übrigens, nicht nur der Buntspecht (Der Dendrocopos major) sondern auch Mittel- und Kleinspecht sind schwarz-rot-weiß.

Thank you! :-) Not my favourite picture (way too far away) but I am glad I managed to take one at all.

By Common Woodpecker you mean the Great Spotted Woodpecker? They’re great! I hear their calls basically every time I walk outside and I also spotted a nest a few days ago — a hole in a tree with screaming babies inside!

For that to happen, I believe that interacting with people from other instances and moving your community and account from one instance to another have to become possible / easier.

At present, people flock to the instances with most users as those often have more local content (local content is generally easier to find than federated content) and they often have a smaller risk of shutting down. If I create a community on a smaller instance, the chance of it being found and interacted with are also much smaller than if it had been created on a bigger instance (because of, as I said, local content being user to find).

Sure, I can create an account on myfirstlemmyinstance.com (example URL, not an actual instance) with 10 users, but if my instance decides to shut down, my community of, say, 500 users will now have to move somewhere else and all old content will be deleted.

Ideally, I think no one instance should have a million users to begin with.

A lot of smaller instances defederate with mastodon.social because it’s very unmoderated. Tonnes of spammy accounts often flood smaller instance from mastodon.social which made a lot of admins defederate with it. Just as a heads up. You might not see posts from quite a few instances.

Ich vermisse den Sommer nie. Herbst ist eh am besten.