Blue Birds

After complaining about my inability to get any good shots of bluebirds, a friend told me that she had bluebirds in her yard and they often nested in her birdhouses. Yesterday she called to tell me that a pair of bluebirds had babies and invited me over. The light was bad, so I put it off until today. And it was a perfect day for it.

I was able to take several really great shots of the birds (the parents only, the babies are only a few days old). The first shot is the female. And as you can see, I was having some fun with PSP and the frame tool.








Here's the male. The birds would often wait outside and look around to be sure there were no predators waiting before going in. They would also peek out the entrance for several minutes before "zooming" out to get more bugs for the hungry babies.

This has to be my favorite of all. The birds were so fast, that most of the flying shots were merely a blur. I was thrilled with this one. One interesting thing, if both birds came together, the female would wait until the male fed the babies before she went in with her catch. In fact, sometimes she would wait for him even if she arrived first. No feminist movement among bluebirds!

Beginning of Spring Migration

I can tell that it's the beginning of spring migration. Most of the American Goldfinches are gone. After two days, our feeders are still mostly full, which means we're down to our resident birds. Over the last couple of months we've been going through about 14 lbs. of birdseed a week! And most of that ended up on the ground because the finches threw out the seeds they didn't like.

Another way to tell is that we made our usual weekend birding trek and saw very few birds. In a period of 2 hours, I only took 15 pictures. With a digital camera, that's almost none!

However, I got lucky. One hawk that I saw decided to fly around instead of away. I think this may be the "hawk of the day" from yesterday, or at least a relative. Notice the white "eyebrows".

It kept flying back and forth, probably looking at us (or at our vehicle) to see what we would do. But it enabled me to get some pretty good shots. (Not perfect, but not bad, either!)


Here's a shot from the "under side". When I saw this hawk on the telephone pole, I thought it might be the Krider's that we saw last year. It's the same area, so that's a possibility.

Now here's a surprise. The hawk below is a different bird from the one above. We ended up quite a ways north of our normal route, on FM 529 -- not a good road for stopping and taking pictures! There were two hawks on a telephone pole cross-bar and not much traffic, so we turned around to look. One flew right away, but the second thought about it for a moment. Then flew! I snapped a really quick shot, being certain that it wouldn't come out at all. Well, it's the usual "hawk flying away" shot -- but it turned out pretty well. So all in all, not too bad for a slow birding day!


I should mention that one of the birds we were particularly looking for today was an Eastern Bluebird. We haven't seen any since those shots I took in January. Well, surprisingly, we did see one. Just one. And it was on one of those roads without shoulders and with traffic. So I didn't get a photo. But I'll keep trying. Just be aware that I'm easily distracted by hawks -- I'm sure you're surprised at that! ;-)

Bluebirds!

So this afternoon was a bit overcast, but we decided to drive around and play with the new camera settings.


This Robin was very cooperative at first. Unfortunately, I'm using more manual controls and having a hard time getting a really clear shot.



This was a great heron shot -- but it's really hard to keep the focus when you're hand-holding the camera and trying to follow the bird!


Interestingly today, when I have a camera that will follow the movement a little better (ok - I'm still working on it!) -- none of the birds wanted to fly. They were very cooperative at sitting still. I guess I shouldn't complain. This is probably one of my best kestrel shots so far.


So here was a real surprise. I saw these birds on the high-wires as we drove by -- white tummies and rufus chests. We passed them by. Then I decided we really needed to go back and see what they were. Wow! Eastern Bluebirds! The maps show that they may be found in our area, but I had never seen one here. Another one for the list!