Great Day at the Feeder
I bought a new bag of seed this morning, similar to the last bag but not exactly the same. Still, I expected it to attract the birds and I was not disappointed. At first, I went out with the 300mm lens and the 1.4x teleconverter. A family of finches, two adults and three youngsters, kept me busy. Here's one of the youngsters and the two adults:
As I was about to leave, the female finch took up residence atop the feeder and she let me get quite close:
But the shots I got of the blue jay that popped in at one point were all out of focus. I decided to try an experiment. I dispensed with the 1.4x converter and sat myself in a chair, closer to the feeder. With the size of the blue jay, this gave me a better chance of fitting it in the frame of the image, and with the lesser zoom, I'd have a little more flexibility with depth of field.
Again, the finches appeared, and although I was determined to not take a whole lot of pictures of them, I could resist this shot:
But then the blue jay put in an appearance and I got this jaw-dropping shot. The bird flew into the top of the tree, hopped quickly from one branch to another to get closer to the feeder, then jumped on to the feeder for the briefest moment, grabbed a nut and flew off. I caught it with the nut in its beak.
Next on the scene was the female downy (unfortunately, the sun shone too brightly on its breast, washing out the image some):
Then I was distracted by a pair of song sparrows. This one was under the feeder, presumably picking up droppings, although they're often to be seen rooting around in grass where there is no feeder.
At first, I thought this second song sparrow might be some other kind of sparrow because it doesn't have much of a central breast spot, but I think it is indeed a song sparrow.
And, the tufted titmouse put in an appearance. Like the blue jay, it didn't hang around long in the tree, flying straight into the feeder, grabbing a seed and flying off. The effort of carrying a seed seemed to affected its ability to display its tuft.
As I was about to leave, the female finch took up residence atop the feeder and she let me get quite close:
But the shots I got of the blue jay that popped in at one point were all out of focus. I decided to try an experiment. I dispensed with the 1.4x converter and sat myself in a chair, closer to the feeder. With the size of the blue jay, this gave me a better chance of fitting it in the frame of the image, and with the lesser zoom, I'd have a little more flexibility with depth of field.
Again, the finches appeared, and although I was determined to not take a whole lot of pictures of them, I could resist this shot:
But then the blue jay put in an appearance and I got this jaw-dropping shot. The bird flew into the top of the tree, hopped quickly from one branch to another to get closer to the feeder, then jumped on to the feeder for the briefest moment, grabbed a nut and flew off. I caught it with the nut in its beak.
Next on the scene was the female downy (unfortunately, the sun shone too brightly on its breast, washing out the image some):
Then I was distracted by a pair of song sparrows. This one was under the feeder, presumably picking up droppings, although they're often to be seen rooting around in grass where there is no feeder.
At first, I thought this second song sparrow might be some other kind of sparrow because it doesn't have much of a central breast spot, but I think it is indeed a song sparrow.
And, the tufted titmouse put in an appearance. Like the blue jay, it didn't hang around long in the tree, flying straight into the feeder, grabbing a seed and flying off. The effort of carrying a seed seemed to affected its ability to display its tuft.
posted by Dave Saunders | 7:13 PM
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