Backyard Buddies

[kundalini]

I moved into my current residence in December and put up a bird feeder around February. It seems I have a great place to feed the birds, but have lousy lighting conditions. From the comfort of my deck (about 40' away), they are backlight in the winter and in nearly constant shade once the leaves from the mature trees. I've tried lighting it up without any satisfactory results. Besides, my shooting time has mostly been when while I was out back having a smoke break. I keep the D300 with the 300mm f/4 attached by the back door. Sadly, without taking any notice until I upload the card, my shutterspeeds were way too slow. I've now set that rig to Auto-ISO maxed at 3200 and minimum shutterspeed at 1/250s. That's all the excuses I'm using right now, but I do have a few more left in the bag. Hope you enjoy.

This fellow greeted me on moving day. Made me feel good about the place.

I've got more, but I'll only bore you a little bit at the time. Thanks for looking.

[Ads]

[manaheim]

Chipmunk! Get a gun!

Love the nuthatch one.

[kundalini]

Cheers Chris.

[greybeard]

Beautiful Bokeh on all of them

[rick93]

I agree, amazing Bokeh!

[kundalini]

Thanks Greybeard and Rick. Yeah, the 300mm f/4 does render a rather nice bokeh IMO.

Here's a few more to whet the appetite.

Shades of Grey

Again, thanks for looking.








Oh yeah, one more thing...... I'm saving some of my favorites for later. You might want to check back from time to time.

[manaheim]

Oh love the birdbath one...

Man, stop it... you're making me want to go out and shoot our birds.

[PixelRabbit]

Great captures and awesome Buddies! The Mockingbird? bathing is wonderful! Nuthatch is great and your hawk is a stunning creature

[2WheelPhoto]

That 300 lens is amazing

[morganza]

Very clear images, bringing out the good colors and makes the photos in overall look amazing. Good job!!

[SCraig]

Great series. I especially love the eyes of the hawk. I think a crop of just his head would be outstanding.

The third one (Bluebird?), is it a tad over-sharpened? It looks a little odd around his eyes.

I do the same thing from time to time. I get out on my deck with my 150-500 and wait for the squirrels to attack the feeder. I had a feeder on the front porch as well and could shoot out the living room windows but one of the attack squirrels we have here got angry when the feeder was empty one day and started gnawing on the woodwork!

[kundalini]

You guys do know that by commenting on my photos only encourages me to post a few more, don't cha? Is that something you really want to do?

Saw this Opossum lumbering along the fence line and ran inside to grab the camera. By the time I got back outside it had already climbed the tree. It wasn't bothered too much by my presence since the neighbor's German Shepard was barkiing its head off, not doubt from smelling or seeing the critter.

There is an entrance to the Capitol Area Greenway in my neighbohood and I always see wabbits when I'm biking on it, but have never seen them in my yard....... That is until.....

[Cpi2011]

Great stuff your series is very much attractive but second third and last images are special for me !!

[kundalini]

I've been blessed with having four types of woodpeckers as visitors to my backyard. There are a couple of pairs of both Downeys and Red-bellied that come around daily and frequently. To my delight a Red-headed and a Northern Flicker pair have been spotted.

Pecker Heads
I've already posted a male and female Downey above, but here's another shot of a male.



Red-bellied male






Red-bellied female



Red-headed (the only woodpecker with a fully red head)
For a while, I thought this would be the only shot I could get



But eventually he made it over to the feeder to dine on some suet












And finally the only decent (and that was said with slight disdain) of the Northern Flicker. They seem to be very skittish and fly off at the slightest creak of the backdoor opening.

Cheers.

[BlackSheep]

Wow, where do you live - in a national park?

Fantastic shots all of them, I really like the possum, the bird bath and the red-headed woodpecker shots!