Photographs Through a Window – November 2016

November has been a good month for photography through my office window. The crows come to look for things in our gutters.

House finches come for water (this one is a male).

There was a purple finch (female) that visited too – seemingly very nervous.

There were bluebirds too – two days in a row. The second day was colder and the feathers are fluffed to keep the bird warmer.

The Carolina Wren is still around. The noises it makes in the fall are quite different than the spring song.

The bird I got the most excited about was a Northern Flicker (yellow shafted) that was in the maple tree long enough to get several pictures.

The blue jays have been around (very noisy)…but have not settled for long enough for me to photograph.

The squirrel has visited our deck several times and I suspect that the bird feeder is the attraction. It is supposed to be squirrel proof and – so far – has not been dumped. One squirrel figured out how to do it last spring….but so far the area under the feeder has remained free of large amounts of seed.

Usually we do have leaves on the roof --- but the leaves are swirling and it rained, so we have a few that are temporarily stuck: tulip poplar and maple. They dry out soon and be blown away (hopefully not into the gutter).

Photographs through a Window – July 2016

I stopped putting birdseed in our feeder in early July when one of the squirrels got coordinated enough to dump a little seed from it. It wasn’t happening consistently so the ‘squirrel proof’ was not filing totally but enough that I decided they didn’t need the extra food in the summer months. I still go quite a few birds to photograph through my office window. The parent of the juvenile house finches featured in yesterday’s post must have been the birds I saw most frequently around our deck.

This frazzled looking Carolina Wren might be a fledgling from the nest in an old gas grill.

Nuthatches always look alert when they are in their head-down stance. This one was enjoying the last seed I put in the feeder.

There is a male indigo bunting that I see periodically so it might be nesting nearby. I photographed the bird from my office window

Then went downstairs to get a different perspective through the French door in our breakfast area. The mourning dove provides a nice size contrast.

The juvenile cardinal still had some downy looking feathers on its breast and around its head

But its bill has turned the adult color over the past month.

I am keeping our bird bath full of fresh water so I expect that will be the reason birds will continue to visit our deck for the rest of the summer.

The bird on the right is making motions like a chick begging for food – but the one on the left does not look like they will be obliging!

Birds with Eyebrows/Horns

I was curious about some little birds that showed up near my window this month that seemed to have tufts of feathers that looked like eyebrows or horns. The lighting for the first picture I got was not that good – but did capture what I was seeing.

I did some research and discovered that they were juvenile house finches! They must have just recently fledged because there was usually a parent bird around when these birds with eyebrows came to our deck.

Sometimes the birds went into begging mode – probably hoping for a feeding from a parent…and sometimes they did not seem as adept at flying as the adult birds. They’ll gain flying skill and lose their eyebrows in a short time.

I’ve been thrilled to see more finches this year even before these fledged….and now there are apparently even more.

Zooming – June 2016

My favorite topics for zooming are the usual: birds, plants, and insects! Click on each of the six images to see a larger version. It was hard to top at six collages because there were so many images to clip. After I went overboard early in the week with the Mesa Verde post – I decided that 6 was enough already. The first image includes a house finch, sweet bay, iris, strawberry and peony.

Next comes a monarch butterfly, a poppy, a mourning dove, the center of a flower, and a thistle.

Then allium ball, the back of a flower and another center, and hydrangea growing on a rock wall.

Then an all-insect collage: a dragonfly, a monarch caterpillar, a bumble bee, a black swallowtail caterpillar and two butterflies.

Next is an all plant collage: castor beans, datura, day lily, canna.

Finally – a moth, two pictures of southern magnolia flowers (l like the curves of the petals around the forming seed pods), and an Asian dogwood.

Photographs through a Window – June 2016

The wildlife has been active at the bird feeder and bath on or deck this month. The squirrels empty the seed bowl so quickly that I am not filling it very often. They still come to sniff around periodically – looking for the small windfall from the birds dropping seeds to the deck as the feed at the squirrel-proof hanging feeder.

I like the chipmunks better and cheer when they find the seed first when I fill the bowl. I think the chipmunks have their home under our deck since I see them in that area almost every time I am in the back yard.

The gold finches made a few appearances.

But the house finches are the frequent visitors

As are the chipping sharrows.

I had to be quick to catch the Carolina Wren. This was one was looking for nesting materials so there may be a second brood starting.

There was an occasional white breasted nuthatch on the roof and at the feeder. They are easy to identify at the feeder because they almost always are head down – not on the usually perch.

Not filling the bowl means that the cardinals and the mourning doves don’t get seed as much either since they are too big for the feeder. That caused a particular problem for the cardinal parents. Their baby was very demanding. The male brought it to the deck under the feeder first.

He was looking frazzled from the constant begging by the time they flew away.

The female brought the young bird as well.

The chick was as big as the parents – looked bigger with the fluffiness of the down that had not been quite replaced with ‘grown up’ feathers.

Finally – the young bird appeared on his own under the feeder just yesterday. Do you think it is a male of female? It will become recognizable in the coming weeks. I’ll include the follow up pictures of the bird next month – assuming the young bird keeps coming to our deck.

Zooming – February 2016

Birds dominate the zooming post for February. There are a lot of clips of the heads. If you want to see an enlarged version of a collage – click on it and a window with the enlarged version will appear.

In the first collage, there is a female cardinal, a male house finch, a pileated woodpecker (from the top of his head), a titmouse and a male cardinal.

Next up is a dove, a crow, velvety buds of a Princess Tree (one of the few botanical images), a robin’s foot – missing a toe, and a blue jay.

The swish of color at the top of the collage below is a blue jay flying away. The blur of color appealed to me. There is snow in a Crepe Myrtle seed pod, and a robin.

The last one is for fun – showing a dove showing off what is under its wing…and a dove blinking. In the lower right corner is the empty ‘nests’ of bird’s nest fungus.

Bird Photography through a Window – February 2016

It’s been a good month for bird photography through my office and kitchen windows. There are several kinds that visit daily. The male cardinal is so brilliantly colored that he always stands out. He is bigger and quite assertive about keeping the juncos at bay when he’s hungry. He’s too big for the feeder so he hogs the seed bowl when he is around.

His mate is the same way.

The blue jays visit the maple tree

And the bird bath. The jays are noisy so I usually have plenty of warning that the flock is passing through. The bird bath is popular when it is very cold because it is heated and probably the on only liquid water around.

The dove come in pairs…and sometimes larger numbers. They like both the seed bowl and the birdbath but sometimes sit on the deck railing and look out over the yard. There was one odd instance when the dove turned around and appeared to be watching me cook dinner through the kitchen window.

The robins have been increasingly common at the bird bath. Previously I saw them in the yard occasionally. One afternoon when the snow was melting the robins were having a feast of worms that must have been close to the muddy surface.  This particular robin has come to our birdbath several times. Can you spot what distinguishes this bird? (Part of the left foot is missing.)

I see the crows frequently and sometimes here them. They sometimes flip debris from the gutter over my office. They very seldom sit anywhere that I can photograph them. This one seemed to be posing for his picture.  Note how different the feathers on the head are from those on the back and wings.

There are others that are less common. A pair of pileated woodpeckers came through a few times this month. They stay in the woods behind the house.

We sometimes see house finches but the juncos generally drive them away from the feeder.

The same is true of the titmice.

A flock of red winged blackbirds came through early in the month. At first I thought they were something else because they were not all black. But I did notice the red and yellow patches. It turns out that these are immature males!

Some of them were blacker…and more mature.

Cowbirds also came as a flock and gobbled up most of the seed in the bowl. There are still some around but not as many at one time as that one cold afternoon. No other birds could get close to the bowl.