Project 365: Aug 11, 2008

Goldfinch hanging upside down. Mourning dove says, wtf??

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Project 365: May 15, 2008

That's Mr. Cardinal, to you.

Project 365: May 8, 2008

Seagull enjoying McDonald's... caught this on my way in to work this morning. It made me want a McGriddle sandwich.

Project 365: April 20, 2008

I spent 4-20 getting high on new birds!!

Sighted a red tailed hawk near Tampier Lake, then headed over to Renwick Nature Preserve to see the rookery, where herons and other wading birds nest. I saw Great Blue Herons and Double-crested Cormorants - new to my life list. I rounded out the afternoon with a stop at Lockport Prairie, where I saw these blue-winged teals.

The Great Blue Herons were pretty cool looking, so I'll share one more photo for their coolness:


These were digiscoped with my Canon PowerShot A570IS. I'm still working on getting the hang of focusing between the scope and the camera, and I had forgotten the attachment to put my Rebel on the scope, which undoubtedly yields better results - though it is handy to be able to pop the camera off and look through the scope by itself at will.

Project 365: April 4, 2008

Head-shot of a common grackle. Shiny!

Project 365: March 28, 2008

Downy Woodpecker, visiting my feeders

Project 365: March 23, 2008

Common Grackle - don't mess with this guy!

Project 365: March 19, 2008

A red-tailed hawk, perched across the pond. He's (she's?) pretty far away, so it's a bit of a grainy shot, but he didn't sit still long enough for me to get the scope on him. I just love their tails, and their dark faces. Just gorgeous!

Project 365: March 6, 2008

Look who stopped by today!

Woohooooo!! C'mon, spring!!!

The first robins of 2008!

Project 365: March 2, 2008

The first red-winged blackbird of 2008! Spring must be on its way!

Photographing dark colored birds

I love the slate colored dark eyed junco. It's a winter bird to the US, coming down from Canada to spend the cold months with us. They like to hang out low to the ground, hopping around and looking for food. Their perky mannerisms can warm even the coldest day.

This is my first winter watching the dark eyed juncos, and I've wanted to get a nice photo of one of these snowbirds. It's been a challenge. They have dark gray to black feathers on the upper half of their body, and white feathers below. For some reason, in most of my previous shots, their dark feathers came out noisy and lacking detail. I think it's due to the fact that the lower half of the tree in my yard, where they like to hang out, is usually in the shade, so that plus the winter light makes for low shutter speeds, and I just couldn't get enough light into the camera. Plus, I usually am shooting through the glass of my windows, degrading the quality of the shot.

This time, I opened the window up to shoot. It was chilly but I finally got a decent shot of my snowbirds!



I think the main keys were good lighting and shooting unobstructed.

Red Tailed Hawk and Great Horned Owl

It was a big day in the back yard!

The Northern Harrier was back, [edit - scratch that! It was a red tailed hawk!] and I was able to get a second chance to practice focusing when taking in-flight bird photos. While I didn't get any good shots of the harrier's underside, my focus was much better than yesterday's attempts. I cannot help but marvel at this bird. It's so amazing to watch!





Then came the big surprise: A Great Horned Owl! I've never seen an owl in the wild before, and to have one visit my own back yard - I was beside myself! It stayed for a good hour, and I was able to get a bunch of photos with the Rebel, as well as digiscope a few with the point-n-shoot.

Project 365: Jan 26, 2008

I would have never imagined my first owl sighting occurring in my own back yard! The excitement was almost too much! This Great Horned Owl sat in my yard for nearly an hour. I got about a hundred shots of him with the Rebel and 300mm lens, and a few with the digiscope and point-n-shoot as well. I didn't hook up the Rebel to the digiscope, as I was hoping to get some flight shots when the owl took off, but he flew away from me instead of toward me and I had no luck with that.

Still, I'm incredibly happy with the shots I was able to get, and hope to get more visits from owls in the future!

Project 365: Jan 25, 2008

A Northern Harrier, in my back yard!

Project 365: Jan 25, 2008

A Northern Harrier, in my back yard!

Project 365: Jan 12, 2008

This was probably the most unobstructed view I've had of a hawk in my back yard to date. This is a juvenile Cooper's Hawk.

Project 365: Jan 5, 2008

The Common Redpoll visited me again today. It's an irruptive species of bird, meaning it only visits this far south once every few years, when the nut and seed supplies up in Canada are too low to feed them. In birding chat forums, it seems like many people are hoping to catch a glimpse of the Redpolls this year, so I figure I'm pretty lucky to have them visiting my back yard.

Project 365: Jan 3, 2008

If I could have gotten a picture of the mouse I had in my house earlier, I would have, but the whole ordeal was so traumatic that grabbing the camera never occurred to me! Instead, here's a photo of my first ever red-bellied woodpecker. Yeah, you'd think this one should be called a red-headed woodpecker, but that's a different bird altogether (one that, not coincidentally, has a completely red head). Woodpeckers are fun to watch and this is the first time I've ever seen a red-bellied :)

Project 365: Jan 2, 2008

Yes, another cardinal - this time, a male. The sun was going down quickly when I got this shot, and it was too noisy to keep, so I turned it black and white and it made a nice silhouette. I'd like to work this up a bit in Photoshop, as I really like it the lines.

Project 365: Jan 1, 2008

My friend Deb has inspired me to give it a go at Project 365. Basically, you post one picture per day for a year. I imagine many of mine will be of birds (as I take pictures of birds pretty much every day anyway), but this will also give me a bit of a reason to snap photos of things other than my avian friends :)

Jan 1, 2008:


Geronimooooooo!

This female Northern Cardinal is jumping off of my deck railing to the cedar feeder where the black oil sunflower seed is. She just started coming to my feeders this week, with her hubby and another male cardinal. The Northern Cardinal is the state bird of Illinois, and I had never seen a female before. I'm very happy to have them here! I think the female is just gorgeous, and of course the male is a stunning bird (as many male birds are).

I had to act quick to get this shot, and unfortunately the light was bad so my ISO was kicked way up, resulting in a very noisy photo - but still, the pose cracks me up and it's one of my favorite bird shots.