Grayness and grouses, the continuation

Off I went again. And again the morning turned out to be gray and foggy and the grouses were far away. I sat and listened to the sounds of spring. The grouses, swans, cranes, lapwings and a number of other birds calling all around me. It just felt good. I tried to take some pictures, but they didn't really work out. Even with a 2x extender I could not get a tight enough picture and extenders tend to reduce the light and soften the pictures too much. Just not good enough. I deiced that the better option is to move the hide closer when the grouses have stopped their show for the day. We'll see in a couple of days if my move worked or not. Hopefully I'll be able to get better pictures next time out. Here are a few examples from this morning, not good:

Gray morning grouses in the distance

I woke up just after two in the morning. This time it was a slightly different trip to my hide at the swamp, since another photographer was coming along, usually I go on my own. We headed off around three and arrived at the hide about four thirty. The break of dawn arrived foggy and gray. The grouses started arriving when there was just enough light for taking pictures. Unfortunately they landed a bit too far from the hide. We did take some pictures, but I'll have to go back out for another try at photographing black grouses at their mating season. These are not the type of pictures I was after:
The pictures do show what mating season looks like, but that's just about it. The season is definately on and picking up in pace.

A morning in the woods

After getting up in the morning, I did as I was told and cleaned the house. After vacuuming the last dustball away, I grabbed my backpack, a bucket and berrypicker and headed to the woods. Before lunchtime I had picked a bucket of blueberries and as I walked about, I found a great spot for rasberries. I'll have to go back in the next couple of days. I kept practicing taking pictures of insects. I obviously need the practice, since most of todays pictures turned out lousy. I seemed to keep making mistakes with focusing. The problem was a gray cloudy day in rather thick terrain, I didn't have much light to work with. I was concentrating on depth and did not take note of the extending shuttertimes as I had my camera set on AV. The end result was a lot of motion blur and obviously shaken pictures.

Along the way I snapped a picture of a fairytale forrest:
Here is a example of the days bugshots:

Not exactly what I was hoping for, I like the composition, but it would be much better if the spider would be completely in focus. I was planning to go out to the swamp this evening, but the dull gray weather does not make me feel like heading out. I think I'll just wait for a day with better light.