Friday's Hunt v 3.10

Well, it certainly has been a very busy time lately, and the fact that I'm a day late on Friday's Hunt is further evidence of the craziness of my work schedule lately.  I was working until almost 9 pm last night, and by then I was just too tired to write.  So, Friday....Saturday....whichever it is, here's the hunt!

Thank you to Teresa at Eden Hills for our prompts, which are:  Starts with J, Week's Favourite, and Bird/Wings.

Starts with J
J is a bit of a tricky letter.  There aren't a lot of easy topics for photography that start with the letter J.  Perhaps I should show you our cat, Mitten, who was stuck under a box that was overturned, and he sort of looked like he was in Jail!  Don't worry, he gets out quite easily.

My mother helpfully suggested jewelry, so here are a few pictures of some beaded pendants that I've made and sold.  I don't have much time for bead work these days, but I'd like to make some more of these in the future.  I really enjoy the challenge of choosing the right beads to work together into a cohesive look.  The colours make me happy!

Week's Favourite
Pippin really is a very photogenic rabbit.  With the rainbow-coloured backdrop of my sweater, I think this is a lovely picture, so it's my favourite this week.

Bird/Wings
I take a lot of bird pictures, as my regular readers will know.  I haven't taken many lately due to being busy, but also because there aren't many birds around right now.  There are the black-capped chickadees and the red-breasted nuthatches, but I don't see any others on a regular basis, except the pheasants.  I went outside to try to get a good bird picture today and it was bitterly cold.  The wind was blowing, making it even colder.  With the wind chill, it was -25 C, which is -13 F.  I was wearing my insulated coveralls, but I didn't put socks on, because I was still in my pajamas.  You can well imagine how cold my ankles became after a few minutes!  Only for you, my dear readers, only for you!

Anyway, I did manage to get a couple of bird pictures - not great ones.  I really wanted to get a wing picture, but I didn't have as much luck as I would have liked today.  I got a picture of a black-capped chickadee looking like a wee torpedo - just snapped at the moment in flight that his or her wings were folded in, rather than spread out.  It's kind of a funny shot - looks like a wingless bird!

I almost got another good shot but as you can see, the nuthatch was just leaving the frame in the lower right.


The feeder was in shadow and there was bright sun behind, making it difficult to get good pictures today. However, I did manage to get this single decent wing shot.  This is the red-breasted nuthatch again.

 
To make up for the lack of good wing shots, I give you this bonus shot of a ring-necked pheasant in the sun this morning.  His plumage is glorious.  You can see he's been eating a lot of the chicken feed I put out to help them stay warm on these cold winter days.  His crop is quite full!

Flight Blur

The photographs I'm sharing today are, essentially, "rejects" from the camera.  But, there is something I find captivating about them.  These are flight photographs, mostly of the chickadees, and they show a blur of feathers and movement that gives a sense of how quickly these little birds move. I try to catch them seated on my hand, but more often than not, I get a blur.  I was throwing out the blurs, but then I began to realize they had a certain charm.

Today, I share with you some of my favourite blurry chickadees and nuthatches!

Here's just a wing blur, to start.

Most of the pictures are "take off" blurs from the point when the bird leaves my hand.

This one has a real curve to it in the bottom part of the picture, adding to the sense of movement. Swoop!

I believe this one is a "landing blur" as opposed to a "take off blur."

Another landing!

This one is one of my favourites - I just think of it as a dancing bird blur!  It's a nuthatch.

Here's a nuthatch blur as the bird was going from upright to upside-down on the branch.  Really just a wing blur, but I love the way the individual feathers are visible, and yet the leaves are seen through the feathers too.

They just move so fast! 

Off they go!

Sharing with The Bird D'Pot!

A New Lens!

I'm so excited because I purchased a new-to-me lens for the Canon Rebel T6 camera that Marc had received from work as his perk for reaching parts sales goals.  I am still learning how to use the camera and its many settings, but I realized fairly quickly that unlike my little point-and-shoot camera, the DSLR (digital single lens reflex) camera didn't have a digital zoom function.  Sometimes the digital zoom works well, especially for casual pictures, but a DSLR camera can accommodate different types of lenses, which my point-and-shoot camera can't do.  The lens that the T6 came with is great for lots of regular pictures, and it's also great for my moth photography, but it really wasn't working at all well for birds, unless they were really close (like the hand-fed chickadees!)

I decided to look on Kijiji (which is like Craig's List in the USA) to see if I could find anyone selling a zoom lens that would fit the T6.  I wasn't sure what I'd find, and the first few times I searched, there wasn't anything suitable.  However, this past weekend, I saw a new posting offering an EF-S 55-250 mm F/4-5.6 IS II lens with image stabilization.  I had to go look that up on Google and find out what it was, what it normally sold for (new) and whether it was appropriate for the kinds of pictures I wanted to take.  I also asked the seller a couple of questions to see if it was suitable for my needs.  As it turned out, it was just perfect for my needs, and I decided to take the plunge because the lens was in excellent condition and the price was fair and reasonable.

I went on Sunday morning to look at the lens and try it on the camera, and the seller turned out to be a delightful lady who spent more than an hour with me teaching me all sorts of useful tips about the lens and how to use the T6 camera in general.  She is a great photographer and showed me some of the images she had taken using the lens.  She gave me lessons about some of the settings on the camera, particularly the non-automatic settings.  I learned so much - I felt like I should pay her extra for the camera lesson!  I felt newly confident as I left with my purchase, and couldn't wait to get started, but I had work projects to do, so I had to be very strict with myself and limit my time with the camera.

Anyway, I am SO excited with the pictures I've been taking with my new lens!  A whole new world has been opened up to me, especially when it comes to bird photography.  Of course, when I first went out with the lens, ready to take some pictures, there was not a bird to be seen.  Isn't that just typical?!  I did, however, find a willing squirrel, although it certainly complained at me very loudly while I was photographing it.

Then, I managed to get a little warbler.  This little bird was far away from me, and moving fast, so this isn't a super picture, but it is still better than what I was getting before.   I think, although I'm not 100% sure, that this is a pine warbler. It's a shame about the shadow on the top of its head.  I'm open to corrections on the ID!

I got a great shot of a nuthatch!  So clear compared to my point-and-shoot with digital zoom.

Then, since there weren't that many birds about, I took a picture of a junco.  They're ordinary little birds, but I was anxious to keep trying out the new lens.  The junco landed on a branch quite close to me, so I thought it was worth a snap.  Anyway, it wasn't until later when I took the time to download and review my pictures that I had a grand surprise!  It wasn't a junco!  It was a black-throated blue warbler!  I am really excited about this one because it's a new bird for my life list!  I have never seen one of these before, at least not to my knowledge!  The shot I managed to take with the new lens is so clear and sharp.  I am really pleased with this photograph.

A cedar waxwing landed almost right in front of me and I missed it.  I was annoyed about that, but I'll be watching for it now.  Meanwhile, I'm working on the ID for this little tweeter.  I believe it is possibly an ovenbird, given what appears to be that dark stripe on its head.  I think the female ovenbird, given that there is no orange on the head.  I'm pretty excited about this one too, because it's another new "life list" bird.

Sorry, blogosphere, but you're probably going to be seeing more bird pictures from me in future, given my amazing new lens!  Tweet tweet!  Not to mention squirrels...

Visit from a Woodpecker

I was feeding the chickadees the other day, when a larger bird swooped by and the chickadees scattered.  I thought at first it was a crow, but it was only a woodpecker who had momentarily caught the chickadees off guard.  I had the camera with me, so I was able to take some pictures of the woodpecker as she made her way up the pole that supports my clothesline.

How do I know it's a "she" and not a "he?"  The male has a patch of red on the back of his head.  This one didn't have that feature, so it's a female.

This is the Hairy Woodpecker (Picoides villosus).  It's very similar in many ways to the Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens).  How can you tell them apart?  Most people say that the easiest way to tell them apart is that the hairy is larger than the downy.  That's useful to know, but it's not always helpful if you don't have both of them in front of you to compare.  The downy is about 6-7 inches (15-18 cm) long, whereas the hairy is about 9-9.5 inches (22-24 cm) long.  At a distance, it can be hard to say.

My preferred method of telling them apart is beak length, which you can see fairly well even by eye, and very well with binoculars.

The smaller downy woodpecker has a smaller beak that is about a quarter of the total distance from the tip of the beak to the back of the head.  The larger hairy woodpecker, as I've tried to show in the picture below, has a beak that is at least a third and sometimes almost half of the distance from the tip of the beak to the back of the head.  That's my way of knowing which is which.

It was lovely to have her visit the yard.  She went all the way up the laundry post and flew away once she got to the top.  I hope I'll see her again!