The Beginning

Orange-crowned Warbler

Chestnut-sided Warbler

After a long hiatus which culminated in the death of my first wife in July, 2003, I have begun birding again. In October, 2003, I joined the Pasadena Audubon Society and participated in several of their birdwalks. Also, I began constantly monitoring various Yahoo listservs on local birding activities. In October, 2004, a month after I had remarried, there was a flurry of messages saying that there were a lot of warblers seen among the tamarisk trees along Laguna Road in Camarillo (henceforth referred to as Laguna Tams). I convinced my new wife, Cynthia, who was a complete tyro when it came to birding to come with me and see for ourselves what the shouting was all about. I borrowed my son's Canon film camera (I forgot what model) with a 70-300 zoom lens attached to it.

When we arrived, there were already several birders there, all of whom were quite excited as they kept murmuring "American Redstart" to everyone who joined the group, all the while pointing to small olive-greenish birds up in the trees. Being newbies, we were not aware that this bird was an uncommon visitor to southern California. As I was trying to photograph the various warblers (including the Redstart, but failing badly there) that were cavorting among the tamarisks, frustrated at re-learning photography at so difficult subjects, a gentleman approached me. He was carrying a camera with a huge lens (it was a 400mm). He noticed I was still using film and he went into this tirade of how digital photography is so much better even for one who is not an "expert" (I guess he can tell by my struggles that I was new at this). To prove his point he showed me the pictures he took just a few minutes earlier. "See?", he said convincingly, "you don't have to wait for your film to be processed to see your photos". He recommended the Canon 300D, then the current rage in digital photography. "Check out Canoga Camera", he said, "they have very helpful guys there and their prices are lower than most camera stores".

A week later, after looking at the pictures I took at Laguna Tams (some turned out to be OK like the pictures above) and recalling the images I saw from the gentleman's camera, I decided to go digital. Little did I know then that I would be hooked into bird photography. The joys and sorrows of which will be the subjects of my musings as a bad bird photographer.