Birds in Motion

"Hey there, rabbit."

Anyone recognize that from the movie, "Before Sunrise?" One of my favorite movies of all time.



Found a bunny checking out my yard this morning, which was fun because there weren't a whole lotta birds out today - maybe because the snow and ice had been melting overnight. Today was warm too (I think it might have hit 40 degrees!) Maybe that's why the birds were hardly around this morning. Mr. Rabbit was in my yard when I got home from work tonight too - he seems to visit at night between 11p and midnight. I've seen him a few times. I threw some bread scraps out there for him, as well as the rest of a 2 day old apple that the starlings didn't finish up. Do rabbits like apples?

Got a photo that would have been cooler if a) I had a longer telephoto lens and b) I could have gotten the focus right.



This hawk was on the far bank of the pond in my back yard. This photo is cropped to insane proportions (thus my wish for a lens longer than 300mm) and is over-sharpened (thus my wish for having gotten the focus right). I had the camera on the tripod, aiming out my window at the hawk because my arms were too tired holding up the camera, and he was sitting on the shoreline for a LONG time - maybe half an hour! I really wanted to get a shot of him taking off to fly, so I sat patiently with the camera mounted on the tripod, holding the remote shutter cable. I got my shot, but I had a very shallow depth of field (another "learned my lesson for next time") and the hawk flew out of the plane of my preset focus.

Can't wait for the digiscope setup. :) I could have gotten a wicked close up of the hawk, I bet (though I don't think it would have helped with the flying shot. I hear that there's very little margin for movement when shooting photos through a spotting scope without getting awful blur). The anticipation of all that could be is killing me!!