November Jay
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Category Archives: Birds
Hawk ID?
I hear you knocking…
just above the door! Isn’t that the hole we filled two weeks ago?
robin and currants
The currants that grow around my home provide nourishment for hummingbirds when they flower in June and berries for other birds later in the summer. This image was captured on a foggy morning earlier this week.
molting stellers jays
I saw some bald blue jays over at Zen Birdfeeder recently. My stellers jays aren’t bald, but their head feathers aren’t very black anymore, and all the feathers look a bit rough. The birds hide in the grass as though they don’t wish to be seen in molt.
hummingbird sipping tall penstemon
don’t stand under the hummingbird feeder…
rainy day hummer
hummingbirds and fan flowers
Here’s how I capture hummingbirds sipping nectar with mountains and sky in the background making bands of blurred color:
Put the pot of flowers on the deck rail where there is a distant view of mountains. (This will work with other distant views or objects as well. Try to find a pleasing background with nothing between the flowers and the background.)
Use a telephoto and experiment with aperture settings until your flowers are sharp and background blurred.
A tripod helps to support a heavy lens while waiting to photograph.
To capture the hovering wings, use a fast shutter speed.
Optional: Add a little fill flash to lighten shadows or light up the iridescent feathers of the bird.
Lower Lake Ranch Ducklings
Swallow at Upper Lake
Catching insects above upper lake’s reflective surface, a violet-green swallow was my subject yesterday as I sat on a rock at water’s edge with the morning sun to my left.
Focusing manually as swallows and swifts darted and dipped over the lake, I watched their flight patterns through the lens. Then, every time I nailed the focus on a bird, I’d capture several images while panning with the bird.
rufous wings – hummingbird photography
A male rufous speeds back and forth from his guard post on an aspen branch to the feeder to defend against all incoming sippers.
Being the dominate rufous at my house would not be so difficult, but feeders on every side of the house make defending from a single branch impossible.
Watching all the feeders throughout the day, I see sippers I might think were being denied if I watched only watch one feeder. Broadtails are still about, but rufous attempts to rule.
Capturing perfectly sharp stills of hovering hummingbirds’ wings was a bit of an obsession for me in the 2005 – 2006 hummingbird seasons here in Consworld. Now, as I continue to experiment with both natural light and flash hummingbird photography, I’m favoring the blurred wing images over the sharper ones.
Even with the bill shadow cast on the bird by the midday sun, I like this photo, but might remove the shadow before printing.