Whenever my ship has to enter the black sea from the Mediterranean, we have to transit the Bosporus straits, which is a small water body, which separates Asia from Europe. A sure shot visitor there are a murder of Black Hooded Crows (Corvus cornix ). It was the first time I saw a crow that was not fully black and was such a shocker to me, because since childhood a crow has always been black to me. There are four recognised subspecies of the hooded crow, these are the C. c. pallescens.
The second photograph was a bit difficult because the water in the back ground was reflecting light and the crow was getting underexposed. I spot metered the head of the crow and which gave a shutter speed of about 0.5 sec. I had to boost the ISO to 400 to increase the shutter speed to about 1/100 sec, so I could shoot it hand held. If I had a polarising filter, may be I could have reduced the background glare and get some details off the water too.The polarising filter is very effective in cutting off reflections and reflected light.
This post is dedicated to my best friend Ashwin, who always complained that I never featured a crow on my blog. ( This one's for you mate)
After my first White Christmas in UK, now I witnessed a White Crow! Thanks mate :)
ReplyDeleteI live in East Texas in the Pineywoods area. We have only black crows, but in the last month I have seen two black and white hooded crows. What a surprise. They are with the black crows near a dairy. Wonder how they got here? Jane
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