Dancing with the Birds

Young Cardinals

I've been trying to capture these young ones (with the camera) for several days now . . . but they are way more skittish than the baby mockingbirds . . . they fly away the minute they see me come around the corner . . . this image is filtered through the mesh of the screen on my bathroom window . . . that's what created the soft-focus look of this photo while I manually focused the camera on the birds . . . I was watching as many as eight cardinals while taking photos . . .

Mrs. Cardinal - finally!

Finally captured some okay images of Mrs. Cardinal . . . she flew away from her nest when I walked by on the way to the mailbox . . . figured she would be gone by the time I walked back in the house and got the camera . . . but there she was, in the dead althea bush . . . she did her usual evasive moves . . . I kept having to move around to try to get her in focus without a bunch of twigs and stuff in the way . . . that blurry effect is because of all those twigs . . . and it is very windy here today . . . and I was trying to manually focus directly on her . . . and had set the camera on the mode for capturing moving objects . . . FYI . . . clicking on the image will take you to an album with a few more shots of her . . .

Unhappy Chirper

This handsome guy was sitting right outside my bedroom window this afternoon . . . annoying Riley (the poodle) with his chirping . . . I know there's a nest there . . . and I keep thinking I'm hearing baby birds . . . but the nest is too high for me to be sure . . . anyway, he did not fly very far when I went out with my camera . . . he kept changing position in this dead althea bush . . . while I snapped 187 shots of him . . . I think you can tell by the attitude that he was not happy with me . . . and he did keep telling me about it . . . Mama Cardinal has not allowed any photos of her yet . . . and it's not for the lack of trying! . . .

Habitual Chirper

Not sure this is the same cardinal as yesterday . . . but he's in the same place . . . in the same tree . . . started chattering about 5:30 p.m. . . . this time I had camera in hand (with memory card installed) when I went to the door . . . he stayed around long enough for quite a few photos . . . but it was even windier today than yesterday . . . so I captured some interesting looking images . . . this was my favorite . . .

We had storms early this a.m. . . . with hail . . . and lots of lightening . . . I saw a ball of blue . . . connected to a lightening bolt . . . way on the other side of the pasture to the west . . . but after all of that, not even enough rain to wet the concrete driveway . . . we need rain! . . . (I know . . . be careful what you ask for!) . . .

Afternoon Caller

The critters in my neighborhood talk to me . . . Riley (the poodle) usually uses sign language . . . or just sits and stares and waits for me to read his mind . . . Jake and Mandy (the red-headed goats) yell at me when they think they have a chance of getting my attention . . . and a treat . . . and now the birds are joining in . . . I'm sitting here this afternoon trying to watch the NASCAR race . . . and I keep hearing a cardinal making all kinds of racket . . . so I open the front door to see what's going on . . . and there he sits . . . in the tree that is right outside my front door . . . and he actually continues to sit there . . . chirping away . . . long enough for me to go get the memory card out of the computer . . . and re-install it in the camera . . . and take several photos of him . . . before he finally flew away . . . we had a very windy day today . . . so several of the photos were blurred . . . and I had to set the focus to manual because the camera could not figure out what to focus on . . . did not have time to play with the aperture settings before he flew away . . . so this was definitely the best of them . . .

Backyard Critters