Ring-necked Ducks! - 25-26 Mar 2017


Radar maps showed bigly numbers of migrating birds last night. This afternoon I drove by the Meijer store on Telegraph Rd. in Brownstown, MI (Wayne Co.) and found 3 Lesser Scaup in the pond next to the gas station. Then, while driving into the Del Webb on Arsenal Rd. I spotted 3 Ring-necked Ducks in the pond in front of the community!

I dropped off dinner, grabbed the scope and camera, and ran back to get some digiscoped images. A new bird for the Bridgewater complex, and a new yard bird for me!



I spent some digiscoping them from the cover of the spruce trees overlooking the west side of the pond. I also swapped out eyepieces on my Zeiss 85T*Fl Diascope; the 40X W returned and the 25-75X Zoom Eyepiece got benched. The reason? These Ring-necks showed me just how bad the chromatic aberration is on the 25-75X. Their brilliant white bills next to their dark-purple heads and bright yellow eyes really show the yellow-blue CA bands that appear when the optics are just not up to par. The 40X W eyepiece has significantly-improved sharpness and only a trace CA under similar-lighting conditions.







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