New Camera at the Pond

I got a new camera last October before the Festival of the Cranes; Canon came out with a new version already and my husband ordered it immediately – and Cannon Powershot SX730 HS. It has all the features of my previous ones (the 40x optical zoom, for example) plus a screen that is hinged so that it can be angled out from the camera. It will make it easier to take pictures with the camera held lower which is often a better angle for composition. It makes it easier to look through the bottom of my glasses and actually see the screen rather than pushing the glasses down my nose and not used them at all for the screen!

The other new feature that the camera has is Bluetooth pairing with my smart phone to get geo-tagging data (from the phone) in real time to add to the images. I’m still experimenting with it but I think it’s going to work well. I had an older camera that had GPS in the camera itself; since I turn my camera off and on a lot, the time it took the GPS to geo-locate made it almost useless. My phone is on all the time so the location information from it – transmitted via a Bluetooth pairing to the camera – should work better.

My first foray outdoors with the new camera was a short walk down to the neighborhood pond. It is still an eyesore covered with green algae and some trash visible around the margins. As we walked toward it, a red-winged blackbird was making a ruckus perched on a stick in the middle of the pond…then a bigger bird took its place.

Zooming in…I discovered it was a green heron!

It perused the pond then took a hunting stance.

And caught a frog!

A few seconds after gobbling down that meal, it swooped down low over the water and caught something…flew to far bank.

Another frog! The pond may have a huge crop of frogs this year because it has few fish and turtles (to eat the tadpoles)….the heron feasted.