Fall 2024 Meeting of the Kentucky Ornithological Society

This weekend I attended the Fall 2024 meeting of the Kentucky Ornithological Society (KOS) at Lake Cumberland Resort State Park. I arrived Friday evening, camping at the state park campground. I paid $80.04 for two nights at a site with full hook-ups. Meeting registration was $10.

Saturday morning I joined a KOS field trip at the Kendall Recreation Area. There were about 20 participants in the group. Generally speaking, I don’t like to do bird photography in birding groups as we have different purposes. As a wild bird photographer I am interested in getting detailed photos of birds in good light. That means finding a clear view of a bird at close to eye level at a good sun angle. Birders, however, are primarily focused on finding and counting rare birds. The birds can be close or far away - it doesn’t matter as much to them as it does to a photographer. Sometimes they ID a bird by sound only, which is just a complete strikeout for a photographer. This group in particular was hearing some birds in the woods around the parking area and kinda just milled about hoping to get a glimpse of the birds through the trees. After about 30 minutes I figured I wasn’t going to get a shot at this location so I took off for nearby Wolf Creek Dam.

Wolf Creek Dam. Note the fisherman along the bank of the foggy river. iPhone 14

I started in the picnic area at the dam. There were some White-eyed Vireos darting through the trees but I couldn’t get a good look. While trying to photograph the birds, a woman approached and asked me and several others in the area if we had seen a little white dog. None of us had. She moved on, then about 15 minutes later I heard her crying loudly - wailing really. She had found her dog and it was dead. The dog was down by the river, which was down a steep trail. I don’t know what happened to it, but my guess is that it had fallen on that trail and hurt itself. It was all rather sad and the woman was really distraught. She called her husband on her cell phone and he came over to console her and help her back up the trail with the dog’s body. I felt awkward birding in the midst of all this, so I took a break in the camper van to give them some space to grieve the loss of their dog.

After they left, I returned to the picnic area. A few other KOS participants were there and they said they saw an Orange-crowned Warbler. It was apparently in a thicket of brown brush just down a steep rutted out trail (the trail the dog was down). I checked it out and didn’t see the Orange-crowned, but I did find a female & male pair of Yellow Warblers. They were darting all through the thicket picking up insects - paying no attention to me whatsoever.

Yellow Warbler (male). Nikon Z8 with monopod-mounted Nikkor Z8 with Nikkor Z 800mm f/6.3 VR S lens at f/6.3, 1/2000 sec, ISO 2500.

Yellow Warbler (female). She has a little insect in her bill. Nikon Z8 with monopod-mounted Nikkor Z8 with Nikkor Z 800mm f/6.3 VR S lens at f/6.3, 1/2000 sec, ISO 2200.

Yellow Warbler (male). Nikon Z8 with monopod-mounted Nikkor Z8 with Nikkor Z 800mm f/6.3 VR S lens at f/6.3, 1/2000 sec, ISO 2800.

I called it a morning and spent the afternoon at the campground. While resting at my campsite, a Summer Tanager flew into a nearby tree. I grabbed my camera and snapped a few photos. She was in deep shade, so the photo was taken at ISO 9000, but DXO PureRaw did a nice job of cleaning it up.

Summer Tanager (female). Nikon Z8 with monopod-mounted Nikkor Z8 with Nikkor Z 800mm f/6.3 VR S lens at f/6.3, 1/2000 sec, ISO 9000.

My workflow for denoising and sharpening images has changed over the years. My first workflow was to do it all in Adobe Lightroom. While the denoise and sharpening tools in Lightroom have significantly improved over the past year, I don’t think they are the best. About two years ago I started using Topaz Photo AI, a separate program which can be run as a plugin in Lightroom or Photoshop. My workflow was to edit the photo in Lightroom, use Photoshop if needed, then run the photo through Topaz Photo AI to denoise and sharpen. While that worked pretty good, I found the denoise feature would sometimes leave a faint grid pattern in the background and the default sharpening tool tended to oversharpen the subject.

I’m a big fan of professional bird photographers and YouTubers Jan Wegener and Glenn Bartley. They recommend denoising and sharpening at the start of the post-processing workflow. The RAW file is first run through DXO PureRaw 4 to denoise and sharpen. Then, you take the image into Lightroom and/or Photoshop to post-process. You still have the option to denoise and sharpen in post, but I rarely find that I need to. So this is my workflow now: Import into Lightroom, denoise/sharpen via DXO PureRaw 4, final editing in Lightroom. About 10% of the time I have to further take an image into Photoshop.

Saturday night the KOS meeting was held at the Lure Lodge at Lake Cumberland State Park. We started by reviewing all the birds seen during the field trips. Collectively, the attendees counted about 90 species. Following the KOS business meeting, the keynote address was given by David Pitts, a Ruby-throated Hummingbird researcher. He gave an excellent presentation describing his 14 years of research on Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, specifically on their nesting behavior. He reported that on average, 41% of Ruby-throated Hummingbird nestlings successfully fledge and leave the nest, but this can vary significantly from one year to the next. It was a very interesting presentation in which I learned some new things that I did not hear during the three hummingbird festivals that I attended in July and August.

Sunday morning I returned to Wolf Dam where I found a variety of birds. Here’s a few photos:

Gray Catbird. Nikon Z8 with monopod-mounted Nikkor Z8 with Nikkor Z 800mm f/6.3 VR S lens at f/6.3, 1/2500 sec, ISO 2200.

White-eyed Vireo. Nikon Z8 with monopod-mounted Nikkor Z8 with Nikkor Z 800mm f/6.3 VR S lens at f/6.3, 1/2500 sec, ISO 1250.

Swainson's Thrush. Nikon Z8 with monopod-mounted Nikkor Z8 with Nikkor Z 800mm f/6.3 VR S lens at f/6.3, 1/2500 sec, ISO 1600.

Downy Woodpecker. Nikon Z8 with monopod-mounted Nikkor Z8 with Nikkor Z 800mm f/6.3 VR S lens at f/6.3, 1/2500 sec, ISO 500.

White-breasted Nuthatch. Nikon Z8 with monopod-mounted Nikkor Z8 with Nikkor Z 800mm f/6.3 VR S lens at f/6.3, 1/1600 sec, ISO 2800.

White-eyed Vireo. Nikon Z8 with monopod-mounted Nikkor Z8 with Nikkor Z 800mm f/6.3 VR S lens at f/6.3, 1/1600 sec, ISO 14400.

Magnolia Warbler. Nikon Z8 with monopod-mounted Nikkor Z8 with Nikkor Z 800mm f/6.3 VR S lens at f/6.3, 1/1600 sec, ISO 5600.

This was my first visit to a KOS meeting, and also my first visit to Lake Cumberland. The birding there was fantastic and I highly recommend it. Most of my success was in the picnic area around “Big Daddy’s Snack Shack” and Wolf Dam. We also had good luck in the campground there.

Next weekend I may stay local and go to the Minor E. Clark Fish Hatchery, or I may head down to Mammoth Cave where this week’s eBird reports have been impressive. I haven’t decided yet.

Until then, happy birding!