Showing posts with label sparrow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sparrow. Show all posts

Friday, July 30, 2010

In the Meantime

I haven't posted lately. I've been on vacation, planning 11th grade courses for my homeschooled teen, having computer problems that proclude me from editing and uploading images, but hope to have some newer images up soon! Looking at getting a Macbook Pro. I hate change, but I may have to bite the bullet. In the meantime, I'm sharing this little vignetted image is of a young chipping sparrow that I took in the spring. Rather than remove the distracting elements in Photoshop, I added the vignette. I love the look of this image, how it looks like a painting.

Saturday, May 1, 2010

"New First-time Visitors"

I've had some new visitors to my backyard recently. One, pictured below, is the Brewer's Blackbird. He and a female showed up recently. I love the beautiful coloring of this male. The metallic-like sheen of the colors in the sun are amazing! The variety & creativity of God is so astounding, & I am always delighted when a new one shows up in my yard.

I think this guy knew it,too! He must have seen his reflection in the sliding, glass doors, because he came right up to it until he was too close for my camera to focus, with the lens I had on it at the time, and appeared to be quite taken with his own good looks, or perhaps mine. haha

After a nice long look, he turned and strutted away as if to say, "Oh yeah, I'm lookin' good!" Too funny!

I haven't seen them in the past couple of days, so they may have been just passing through. From what I've read, they usually hang out with a group of other blackbirds of their kind or even with red-winged blackbirds, but perhaps this changes in the spring when they pair up. If you know, maybe you can enlighten me. Thanks.
Another recent first is the White-crowned Sparrow. These guys are just plain cute, especially with they're in my deeper grass and you just see their little heads popping up and being lit by the sun. (no pix of that, yet) At first I noticed only one or two, but in subsequent days we've had as many as 6 or more at a time.

They seem to arrive in the trees and then land down on and around the rocks of our island, over to the pond and all through the grass. They also like to feed on the deck, under the hanging feeder and get what drops to the ground from the finches feeding above.


When you open up your yard up to feeding birds, you just never know what might show up. Until next time...

To see more of my backyard visitors, click here.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Song Sparrow

I had a delightful day at Zoo Boise Thursday. Trees are budding, birds are chirping and singing, the grass is green again. It seems like the winter was extra long this year, but it could just be me. I first heard this sparrow before I spotted it, it was singing so beautifully. I made a guess that it was a song sparrow. When I got home I checked my bird ID books, and my guess appears to be correct.
It's the first one I've identified and also photographed, since I began birding, so it will be added to my life list. I consider it to be wild since it was not in an enclosure, but free to go wherever it wanted.
I'm also creating a Photo Life List gallery, where I'll put identifying photos of the birds I have seen. They most likely won't all be great photographs, but at least good enough to confidently identify the birds. I will probably post on it with a link when I have it up and going. If any of you experienced birders see that I have a bird mislabeled in any of my bird galleries, I would appreciate you emailing me to let me know, and I will make the correction.

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