High temps, humidity, haze etc etc etc (and the use of a telephoto lens) will all produce degraded IQ and a sort of overall grey/blue cast with subdued colors, contrast and saturation. All the atmospheric distortion will be recorded by the camera while your brain/eye tend to smooth it out. Looking through a powerful scope or binoculars you can see the same results. Some of the old shots I took in Vietnam show the same effects and the further away the subject is the worse it will look.
It is one of the reasons why the "haze" filter and sliders in Lightroom, Photoshop and other PP apps were so welcome when they came out. Yes, you can do the same thing with other parts of the PP apps but having a combined "haze" adjustment made it easier and faster.

As to the make every shot count mind set and trying for perfect shots that need no PP. Well sometimes it just isn't possible to any great degree. I started with film in the 50s, then went digital in the late 90s and dropped film altogether by about 2003. It took me a while to get used to the idea of virtually unlimited shots available and I still shoot less than people who learned on digital, like my daughter - at a friend's wedding we were two of the 6 family and friends asked to photograph the wedding and reception (plus only God knows how many others doing it on their own of the aprx 200 people who attended) and I shot aprx 400 frames with my two bodies (and I did the "pose with Uncle so and so and friends XY&Z shots"), my daughter did over 1200 frames while also partying with her friends and helping with the food - many short bursts of people dancing. The digital camera and its burst setting is a God Send for any moving subjects, sports, action, wildlife, birds etc. - even if every frame is properly exposed and focused you will find a small % where the subject is in a great position/pose that no one is fast enough to spot, recognize and shoot on single shot with any high % of success.

By the way, your two wading birds, you are too far away and the haze/humidity in the air kept anything from being in focus.
I hope you don't mind but I did a quick 5 minute edit on the first one, with a crop - still not great but some improvements. I adjusted contrast, reduced highlights, tweaked colors and saturation and added some clarity. But as said the haze kept everything just a tad out of focus in addition to the contrast and color problems it introduced. I set PS to not save anything and deleted the image as soon as I loaded it to UHH. Your posts and my edit look better in download than the thumbnail.

This past summer I and my wife spent a very enjoyable trip doing a swing through western Canada and some of the northern U.S states. Our purpose was twofold, first birdwatching and secondly photography of those critters we saw. We visited many excellent wildlife areas in both countrys and collected close to 8000 to 9000 digital images. Two of the most excellent areas we visited were the C.J Sayer NWR in North Dakota and the Bowdoin NWR in Montana. This last one is a very special place especially for birders whom like to get good pictures of a large number of bird species all located in a fairly small area. I highly recommend that if you can visit here, DO!
It was at these places the strange occurrence/problem happened. It is something I had never run into before and hopefully will never again. I'll use our visit to Bowdoin to illustrate what occurred. As we were on a strict regimen we only allowed ourselves one day for this refuge. Luckily that day was sunny (perhaps too sunny). We spent a total of 8 to 9 hours in the refuge during which time I accumulated close to 800 images. The equipment I was utilizing was a Canon T6i DSLR along with two lenses, my walkabout Canon 300 L Prime along with my Tamron 150-600 G2 (on a tripod with a remote trigger). All through my field time I periodically checked the images on the small camera LCD screen and all appeared well. Any I thought were problematic were erased in the field at the time. I didn't bother to download the images to my laptop when returning to the motel but instead took the SD card from the shoot and stowed it away samely in my suitcase. I do this with all my shoots for each individual site visited. However, when I got home and downloaded these images to my desktop lo and behold I found that a large majority of the images (over 90%) were in fact very poor in quality, the focus of them apeared to be quite a bit off. They were to me basically unusable. They could not be cropped/enlarged to any extent, something which when taking pictures of small birds is essential. At first I thought I had a camera problem but an examination of pictures taken prior to these sites in British Columbia and also of pictures taken after at two refuges in Michigan (Seney and Shiawassee) illustrated that the camera was working flawlessly.
The only difference we could see that could have created the occurrence/problem was the weather conditions at the time. At this time in August we were in the middle of an extreme heat wave all through most of southern Canada and the northern USA. At the time of the shoot at Bowdoin the thermometre on our car was showing 105F and the humidity on the radio was pegged at 93%. Thusly we were in fact on August 10 taking our pics in very extreme temperatures and humidity. This was just as true when we proceeded and birded in North Dakota on the 12th. So, it appears that the cause of my problems and why I lost the use of many images was due to the very extreme weather conditions. Has any of you Hoggers ever run ito this type of problems. Up here in the great north we seldom ever see anything even close to those conditions. Myself, I've been behind a camera, either film or digital, for nigh onto 60 years and can honestly say I have never seen anything like that happen. Perhaps this was just a problem with my personal camera, but my wife also had some likewise problems but at a much lesser scale. (she uses a Canon T6s with a 300 L prime) so I don't think that is the reason. Or perhaps it is a Canon problem, I hope not. What say Hoggers, any thoughts on this??????
In conclusion I find that you cannot depend at all on the small LCD screen on the camera to any great extend and DON'T take any pics if you can help it when the temperature rises above 100F. I guess one could sing a ditty like Jerry Reed (I think) - “when yer hot yer hot”, while I would probably be singing “when it's hot it may be 2 hot”

LittleRed

This past summer I and my wife spent a very enjoyable trip doing a swing through western Canada and some of the northern U.S states. Our purpose was twofold, first birdwatching and secondly photography of those critters we saw. We visited many excellent wildlife areas in both countrys and collected close to 8000 to 9000 digital images. Two of the most excellent areas we visited were the C.J Sayer NWR in North Dakota and the Bowdoin NWR in Montana. This last one is a very special place especially for birders whom like to get good pictures of a large number of bird species all located in a fairly small area. I highly recommend that if you can visit here, DO!
It was at these places the strange occurrence/problem happened. It is something I had never run into before and hopefully will never again. I'll use our visit to Bowdoin to illustrate what occurred. As we were on a strict regimen we only allowed ourselves one day for this refuge. Luckily that day was sunny (perhaps too sunny). We spent a total of 8 to 9 hours in the refuge during which time I accumulated close to 800 images. The equipment I was utilizing was a Canon T6i DSLR along with two lenses, my walkabout Canon 300 L Prime along with my Tamron 150-600 G2 (on a tripod with a remote trigger). All through my field time I periodically checked the images on the small camera LCD screen and all appeared well. Any I thought were problematic were erased in the field at the time. I didn't bother to download the images to my laptop when returning to the motel but instead took the SD card from the shoot and stowed it away samely in my suitcase. I do this with all my shoots for each individual site visited. However, when I got home and downloaded these images to my desktop lo and behold I found that a large majority of the images (over 90%) were in fact very poor in quality, the focus of them apeared to be quite a bit off. They were to me basically unusable. They could not be cropped/enlarged to any extent, something which when taking pictures of small birds is essential. At first I thought I had a camera problem but an examination of pictures taken prior to these sites in British Columbia and also of pictures taken after at two refuges in Michigan (Seney and Shiawassee) illustrated that the camera was working flawlessly.
The only difference we could see that could have created the occurrence/problem was the weather conditions at the time. At this time in August we were in the middle of an extreme heat wave all through most of southern Canada and the northern USA. At the time of the shoot at Bowdoin the thermometre on our car was showing 105F and the humidity on the radio was pegged at 93%. Thusly we were in fact on August 10 taking our pics in very extreme temperatures and humidity. This was just as true when we proceeded and birded in North Dakota on the 12th. So, it appears that the cause of my problems and why I lost the use of many images was due to the very extreme weather conditions. Has any of you Hoggers ever run ito this type of problems. Up here in the great north we seldom ever see anything even close to those conditions. Myself, I've been behind a camera, either film or digital, for nigh onto 60 years and can honestly say I have never seen anything like that happen. Perhaps this was just a problem with my personal camera, but my wife also had some likewise problems but at a much lesser scale. (she uses a Canon T6s with a 300 L prime) so I don't think that is the reason. Or perhaps it is a Canon problem, I hope not. What say Hoggers, any thoughts on this??????
In conclusion I find that you cannot depend at all on the small LCD screen on the camera to any great extend and DON'T take any pics if you can help it when the temperature rises above 100F. I guess one could sing a ditty like Jerry Reed (I think) - “when yer hot yer hot”, while I would probably be singing “when it's hot it may be 2 hot”

LittleRed

High temps, humidity, haze etc etc etc (and the use of a telephoto lens) will all produce degraded IQ and a sort of overall grey/blue cast with subdued colors, contrast and saturation. All the atmospheric distortion will be recorded by the camera while your brain/eye tend to smooth it out. Looking through a powerful scope or binoculars you can see the same results. Some of the old shots I took in Vietnam show the same effects and the further away the subject is the worse it will look.
It is one of the reasons why the "haze" filter and sliders in Lightroom, Photoshop and other PP apps were so welcome when they came out. Yes, you can do the same thing with other parts of the PP apps but having a combined "haze" adjustment made it easier and faster.

As to the make every shot count mind set and trying for perfect shots that need no PP. Well sometimes it just isn't possible to any great degree. I started with film in the 50s, then went digital in the late 90s and dropped film altogether by about 2003. It took me a while to get used to the idea of virtually unlimited shots available and I still shoot less than people who learned on digital, like my daughter - at a friend's wedding we were two of the 6 family and friends asked to photograph the wedding and reception (plus only God knows how many others doing it on their own of the aprx 200 people who attended) and I shot aprx 400 frames with my two bodies (and I did the "pose with Uncle so and so and friends XY&Z shots"), my daughter did over 1200 frames while also partying with her friends and helping with the food - many short bursts of people dancing. The digital camera and its burst setting is a God Send for any moving subjects, sports, action, wildlife, birds etc. - even if every frame is properly exposed and focused you will find a small % where the subject is in a great position/pose that no one is fast enough to spot, recognize and shoot on single shot with any high % of success.

By the way, your two wading birds, you are too far away and the haze/humidity in the air kept anything from being in focus.
I hope you don't mind but I did a quick 5 minute edit on the first one, with a crop - still not great but some improvements. I adjusted contrast, reduced highlights, tweaked colors and saturation and added some clarity. But as said the haze kept everything just a tad out of focus in addition to the contrast and color problems it introduced. I set PS to not save anything and deleted the image as soon as I loaded it to UHH. Your posts and my edit look better in download than the thumbnail.

I have had similar problems occur when shooting over a large body of water on a sunny day but much cooler temperatures in Nova Scotia and Glacier Bay in Alaska. I shot what I thought were nice images using a 400 mm lens on a FF camera as well as very long focal lengths on a bridge camera and when viewing on my computer screen I was disappointed to so a lot of distortion and lack of good focus. I originally though I had a camera/lens problem but my wife’s images with her camera showed the same results. I determined that the water surface, although very cold, absorbed enough heat from the sun to produce heat wave distortion in the atmosphere over the surface of the ocean water. In both instances the weather was sunny and clear, breezy and no noticeable fog or haze. The results of my images looked like they had been PP using a distortion filter. None of those images were useable unless just making a 4x6 photo. I never had this problem before with long lens shots like birds over water but I attribute what I experienced to the temperate differential between the reflected heat waves from the cold water into the the cold air rendering the heat waves very prominent.
Just my observation......

Goober