The Seagull

As you may or may not know, my friend Chris and I took a 10-day road trip in May. On May 15th we were headed down the Oregon coast enjoying the scenery and lovely driving weather. It is always nice taking a drive without time limits. We actually took the time to pull over and check out historical markers and interesting sights. Here at this pullout on the road we had a visitor. He stayed with us for quite awhile and allowed us some wonderful close-up shots. We fed him the rest of our cherries and he gobbled them all up. When we were about ready to go I stomped behind him to make him flap his wings and fly away so that I could get some nice close-up shots of it. He was a very patient model. Here are some of my favorites from the photo shoot with him.

Birds.

I finally got a DSLR. I decided on the Canon T3i. I got a telephoto lens at the same time with a range of 75 - 300mm. I immediately put it to use trying to photograph birds. It was then that I realized the lens I really want is 1200 dollars. Sigh.
I will continue to perfect my techniques and get back to using manual settings while I save my pennies to buy that lens. Here are my first few bird shots with the new camera. These were all taken on automatic settings, although a couple of them might have been manually focused.

A Junco in my yard.




A Crane off the Oregon coast.




Robin in a tree.



This is a baby...I'm not sure if it's a sparrow or a junco or ?
It is sitting in my flowering quince.



Nesting Canada Geese, also along the Oregon Coast.



I think this is a red-winged blackbird. He was scolding something.



This is the same red-wing sitting in the cattails.



The bearer of the twig. I am not sure what this is. I thought when
I first saw it that it was a cormorant, but it doesn't look like it
from the angle in this picture.



This little hummingbird sat on this stump for the better part
of a half hour. I am not sure why he has his tongue out at
this point, but he does.



This is him taking off. He is a ruby throated hummingbird.

Winter Day Excursion, part 2

After our trip to Morse Wildlife Preserve we took Logan and went to lunch at a little Mexican restaurant. We then headed to Northwest Trek. It is not normally open for the weekdays in the winter, but they were having a special day to celebrate winter. They had little centers set up to teach us about winter care for the animals. We had a great time and Logan enjoyed himself. We got to see lots of animals. Here are the eagles and owls. I will do the other animals tomorrow.


The Bald Eagle.



The Golden Eagle.



The Snowy Owl.



The Great Horned Owl.



The Barn Owls.

Birds

Doesn't this bird look like he's being very nosy? haha...The photographic quality isn't that great, but I love his "expression". He was trying to figure out if me and my camera were a threat. He decided that we weren't and went back to foraging in my gutter garden for goodies.



Foraging in my gutter gardens. I guess I need to clean the gutters. These guys looked a little ruffled, but I like the rust color on the one. It didn't come out very good, so there's another argument for the DLSR that I want and the telephoto lens I want to get when I get one.


This little guy was sitting on the dolly on the sidewalk.

Tiptoe through the thistles...

or you might be poked.

I love my camera because it can zoom in on birds at the top of my trees. I still want a DSLR, though. Digital zoom can get you there and get you close, but it doesn't have the focusing ability of a separate telephoto lens so you can't get that real "feathered" look that is so great when taking pictures of birds. So I'm going to continue to save my pennies and buy myself the DSLR. I keep changing my mind, but it's the birds and insects that make me want a DSLR so bad. With this in mind I have decided to start saving up my money and, in the meantime, I am going to start checking out features and issues so I can make the right choice when I do decide to finally spend the money. Sometimes it makes me want to get another film SLR just until I can afford the camera I want, or more importantly, the lenses I want. That being said, here are my offerings for today.


The birds at the top of the tree.


I love thistles. Yes, I know they are weeds, and pretty poky weeds at that, but I love the plants and I love taking photographs of them. I have one in my yard that is about 4 feet high, so I stood next to it and took macros of the flower heads. I love the spiky round heads on this plant. I was amazed when I put these pictures on the computer, though, because around each of the flower heads is white webbing. I had never seen this before and, at first, I thought they had contracted some strange plant malady, but on closer inspection I see that it is webbing.












There were several of these little spiders and they had built webbing around the spikes to catch the aphids and other insects that came to feed on the plants. Very innovative!



Here you can see some of the hapless insects. Each flower head had at least ten trapped insects, but it was hard to get in the right spot to get a clear picture of them.

Yay...bigger is better!

Look what I did.

It's dark in the corner, but you get the idea.



Enjoying their new digs!



A friend gave me a box of cages. There were three cages in there and the only thing missing was the top to one of them. I took two of them and wired them together by removing the middle top wall of each cage top. Then I wired the bottoms together. It makes one really nice sized big cage and all three birds can be in there together. I wasn't sure about putting the parakeet in with the cockatiels at first, but they are doing just fine. They have been together for a long time, but the parakeet always had his own space. I love the fact that the cage looks much neater, now. The other two cages didn't match at all.

I was going to take some pics of them while I was taking pics of the cage, but they kept running from the camera. Scaredy birds! ha ha.

Run. Save yourself.



Running from the evil camera.



Trying to hide from the evil camera.