Backyard Buddies

kundalini · Jun 19, 2012

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.

manaheim · Jun 19, 2012

Chipmunk! Get a gun!

Love the nuthatch one.

kundalini · Jun 20, 2012

Cheers Chris.

greybeard · Jun 20, 2012

Beautiful Bokeh on all of them

rick93 · Jun 21, 2012

I agree, amazing Bokeh!

kundalini · Jun 21, 2012

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. :eyebrows:

manaheim · Jun 21, 2012

Oh love the birdbath one...

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

PixelRabbit · Jun 21, 2012

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

2WheelPhoto · Jun 21, 2012

That 300 lens is amazing

morganza · Jun 21, 2012

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

SCraig · Jun 21, 2012

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 · Jun 22, 2012

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 · Jun 23, 2012

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

kundalini · Jun 23, 2012

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 · Jun 25, 2012

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!