I’ve been busy enjoying time with my family who are on holiday from work and school. A few days at our favorite hotsprings, a day of playing in the snow at a nordic center, and just hanging out at home reading, relaxing, and keeping the fire burning. There have been a few images captured, but I haven’t looked at most of them as I’m on holiday, too. Happy New Year.
This is my second time to have a post in an edition of I and the Bird. Thanks to wren at Wrenaissance Reflections for suggesting it to me the first time around.
If you’d like to participate in the 66th edition of I and The Bird, please send the URL of your blog post to the next carnival host, John, at bornagainbirdwatcherDOTcom with the words “I and The Bird” in the subject line. The deadline for submissions is Tuesday, Jan. 8.
With more snow in the forecast, these little birds seem to be stocking up today. I know that some bird species hide a stash of seeds. At the rate the seed is leaving my feeders today, it wouldn’t surprise me to find these birds hiding the seed somewhere. They seem too small to be eating it all.
Yesterday we had light snow all day with low temperatures. The birds came to eat at the feeders and clean up the spilled seed under them. This junco was willing to pose for me, turning his head back and forth and always with a bit of seed in his beak. Six pine grosbeaks also came, but were more shy about being photographed. I think my dog barked at them from inside the house and frightened them. Today, the nuthatches, chickadees, and juncos are at the feeders in the sunshine, but we are stacking a load of firewood, not photographing. I’ll go back to work and perhaps get the camera out later in the afternoon.
junco in the snow – 1/60 sec at f/5.6, focal length 400mm, ISO 200
The 100-400mm and I are getting along fine, though I?ve not encountered the larger wildlife subjects I would prefer to photograph to test it. The stellers jays and squirrels are willing to pose briefly as they hurry to and fro picking up their payment of seeds and nuts.
The squirrels spend so much time chasing each other away from the food, they eat very little. The jays seem to enjoy the contest of who-can-eat-the-most, so the first to arrive calls out to others. Let the eating begin!
The lens is a bit heavy for me at 3 pounds, so hand held photography is alternated with tripod support. The manual says to switch off the IS (image stabilization) when using a tripod, but I sometimes forget. When I do remember, I then forget to switch it on again for hand held. Wish I could buy more memory for my wee brain.
I like to shoot aperture priority when photographing birds as they move in and out of the shadows so quickly. All the images in this post were shot at f/5.6 with the ISO at 400 or higher. Shutter speeds vary with each image.
I?ve been working around the outside of my home, mostly shooting from the deck into the trees. Since the house is on a steep hillside, shooting from the deck often puts me at eye level with the birds in the trees.
When I photograph birds, I begin to recognize individuals by the variations in their markings or injuries they have. I believe the birds are taking in the sight of me as well. I changed hats this morning as the temperature rose. When I put on the new hat, the birds flew up to higher branches and watched me for some minutes before coming back to feed. I suppose they?ve taken note of the new lens, too.
To some, this housecat may seem a deviation from my normal nature and wildlife photos, but my friends and family know this cat is a bit wild. This is his look that says, ?I?ll give you three seconds to stop pointing that camera at me.? When my new lens arrived, it was too dark outdoors to shoot anything. The other human family members both said, ?Not me!? so I took my chances with the wildcat living in our home.
Handheld (!) at 1/15 second, at 275mm, f5.6, no flash, lighting from a single overhead compact fluorescent with the ISO set at 1600, from 10 or 12 feet away and ready to run should my subject forget who feeds him.
As recently promised in comments, the backside of the stellers jay.
I’ve been playing with a new lens, canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM. We’ve had frigid temperatures, but I got a few stellers jays to come out and play. The lens is working well so far and I’m hoping for a chance to use it a bit more this week. The zoom is operated push, pull instead of twist. I have to get used to that. I love the full time manual focus; you can use the auto focus first and then fine tune manually without turning off the auto focus. I have one other lens that has full time manual focus and wish they were all FTM.
The stellers jay image: 1/250 second, f5.6, 340mm, ISO 250
More to come with this lens… I’m hoping for some big furry mammals to wander by, deer, elk, or a bear at a distance.
Their faces are so expressive that I want make cartoon captions for the images. (anthropomorphic, don’t scold me, I know!) I photograph this common bird frequently and love sorting through the results of an hour spent with them. The stellers jays’ crested heads change continually, sometimes the feathers are fluffed, sometimes spread into a crown, often folded into a sharp peak. They seem always hungry, so if I throw out a bit of seed or peanuts they come to the feast and pose for me. 
These are crops of the low resolution jpegs. I shoot RAW plus jpeg, but usually only process the raw files for printing. For the blog images, I just crop, if needed, the jpegs and resize them smaller for easy viewing on the web.
