Through the Kitchen Window - Mourning Dove

It seems like every time I stand at the kitchen sink in the morning - I see birds! I’ve learned to keep my camera handy and make sure the window says clean enough to photograph through.

The mourning doves are generally silent so I sometimes don’t notice them right away.

This one seemed to be surveying the yard below. Maybe it got a drink from the bird bath just before I saw it.

Then it calmly walked along the railing…and flew away.

Brookside Gardens in June 2015 - Part 2

The small animals on or near plants are sometimes the challenge I choose for photography. The walk around Brookside Gardens resulted in a few worth sharing:

The spider on the yucca flower

A damselfly that must have been tired since it stayed put for such a long time. It is an ebony jewelwing!

A mourning dove enjoying the summer sunshine in the garden

Bees at the hollyhocks. I always associate hollyhocks with a great aunt’s house. She always had them planted around the side steps to her house.

A bee on a hydrangea. Brookside has quite a variety of hydrangeas these days and this type seemed the most popular with the bees the day I was there.

Brookside Gardens Birds

My walk around Brookside Gardens last weekend offered more than the usual opportunities to photograph birds. The day was chilly and a little breezy….but full of sun and an improvement over prior days. The birds were active.

The robins were the easiest to photograph because of their numbers and their interest in searching through leaves and grass for edibles. It was possible to get close enough for the camera zoom to do the rest. This bird had just stopped his searching temporarily to survey the surroundings…eyeing me with suspicion.

The cardinal was singing a spring song in the tulip poplar. I appreciated my monopod for this shot - and that the breeze paused momentarily.

This mourning dove was walking around the bed of sprouting bulbs looking for nesting material. In the instant after this picture was taken, the bird flew away with the piece of straw in its beak.

There were lots of these black birds (in the trees, in the bushes, on the grass) but I haven’t quite identified them. The tail seems short for a common grackle. They eye is yellow so that rules out a cowbird or starling…and there is not red shoulder patch for it to be a red winged blackbird. Hmmm.