Morning Daisy

We’re in the midst of the 2013 Virginia Working Landscapes Bird Survey, and over the weekend, my partner and I did two surveys at Kinloch Farm in The Plains, Virginia.

This is our third consecutive year working in the fields on this beautiful farm, and it’s been rewarding to see the many new species making their homes here now that the farm owners are transitioning them to native grasslands.

On Saturday morning, I arrived early to the field and enjoyed a short photo shoot using my Sony RX100 on macro scene selection. I’ve experimented more with this camera as it’s so easy to slip it in my pocket while hiking the fields during the surveys. The Sony’s short zoom capability isn’t ideal for photographing the birds, but it’s great for landscape and macro images.

Getting the camera to focus on my preferred spot is a little tricky in Macro Scene Selection, but after some trial and error I’ve figured out the nuances and have brought home some fun shots. One of our fields is filled with wildflowers, and I enjoyed spending some time with them before the dew burned off.

It was a little disappointing not to be able to photograph the birds we documented, especially the colorful Common Yellowthroats, Baltimore Orioles and the Indigo Buntings, so next time I’ll switch cameras and bring the DSLR (and munch a protein bar on the way to the field for some extra energy to lug that added weight along!).