An atmospheric river storm hit Southern California, this weekend, and it felt like a much-welcomed event, especially looking back, a bit, to this past year’s wildfire season, which claimed much of Pacific Palisades and Altadena homes in those areas. On a lighter note, however, a rain storm is an opportunity to catch photos that are rarer, in other circumstances.
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| Pershing Square, lately, has been seeing impressive numbers of pigeons show up to hang out on the stairway to the main plaza level of the park. |
I had a great idea come to me, from my Amazon Vine product reviewing gig, in the form of a clip-on
telephoto / macro 2x mobile device lens, by Veedzoens, for this rainy day, seeing as how the birds had been showing up in such large numbers at Pershing Square, almost like they had taken over the place. What better photogenic opportunity could there be, for capturing some of the flock on camera using my telephoto lens?
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| The sparrows were the gatekeepers, as I approached the pigeons’ daytime roosting and hang out spot at the nearby stairs. |
Now, the lens was made specifically for the iPhone, which has a different sized lens, and different on-device lenses, from my iPad Pro, but I was able to adapt it fairly well, to my device. As you can see, there’s some of the inside of the lens that got captured; this happens when the camera is zoomed out. Aside from that, the optical zoom feature of the lens offers a sharper image, and better close-ups than my standard iPad Pro cameras, which max out at 12 megapixels, for the rear camera.
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| My new 2x telephoto lens. There’s an attachment that goes with it that the lens screws on to, which is a clip for mounting the camera on the rear camera of a mobile device. |
I ended up going out, twice, yesterday, in the rain, for the sake of feeding the pigeons, as it was a lot of fun to have a rainy day, with so many photogenic birds present, and I got to make use of my new telephoto lens for most of the photos captured here, from this day.
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| I was finally able to get some good close-ups of Muffin, one of the new brown-ish colored pigeons of this flock of birds. |
The birds are truly a landmark feature of this part of town. At various several times, during the day, such as after a meal, the pigeons will all fly up in to the air, and follow the leader, as they circle around the high rises, sometimes whisking around to the next street over (Broadway), and some of them fly back over some of the buildings, and they end up roosting back at their lofty places, such as on an apartment building’s ledge, or at the traffic signal. This daily ritual, featuring around 150 birds, or so, at a time, is a signal, at times, to other flock members situated on Broadway, who branch off, from there, to check out different feeding and roosting spots on the next street down, while others may recognize me, and they return to the staircase at Pershing Square, awaiting their meal.
The birds are truly in their top form, when they’re out in the rain, and it’s a rich sensory experience to observe the pigeons as they work out eating their meal, as a flock, as well as during their post-meal socialization moment, and their flying in formation is a beautiful sight to behold.
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| The pigeons perch on the traffic lights, as it’s one of their favorite spots to wait around for meal time. |
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| Muffin, in the Rain (fan art, inspired by Clifford and Rosemary Ellis’ Antiquaries Prefer Shell, 1934) |
