Feeding the birds part 2

The promised second round of photos from our day of feeding the birds while lunching at Bubba's. First up, though, a shot of a bird that hasn't yet made an appearance on my blog, but is about to get a lot of face time in this post—the Red-crested Cardinal:



These cardinals are a fairly common sight on Kauai (or at least on our end of the island), and there were at least three or four patrolling the ground around Bubba's, trying to beat the sparrows to any scraps that might fall. Only one, though, was daring enough to hop up on the picnic table and try for a french fry:



It didn't hang in there like the sparrows, though, backing off when it couldn't immediately snag a piece of fry for itself:



The sparrows, however, had no such issues:





I love how it looks as if it wants to say, "Are you really going to let her have that whole fry?":



"Seriously? You're going to let her have all of it?":



Liked the wing flare on this one:



Check out the sparrow and the cardinal facing off in the background:



"Oh yeah. This piece is mine.":





I thought this was a fun sequence of a female sparrow doing her darndest to get a piece of the fry:













Another cool wing flare:



And two final shots of a male sparrow, before and after it exploded into the air as it worked to break off a piece of the fry:

Feeding the birds

Good news: I'm posting more Hawaii pics. Bad news: while I think they're fun, they're not particularly scenic.

Whenever I'm in Kauai, one of the things on my must-do list is pay at least a couple of visits to Bubba's Burgers. The burgers won't be winning any culinary awards, but they're damn tasty and it's a fun place to hang out. We usually sit at one of the picnic tables lined up in front of the building, and spend our meal watching the birds flit around in search of fallen scraps of food.

On one lunchtime visit, however, the birds—particularly the House Sparrows—seemed extremely interested in our meal as it was in progress, lining up along the edge of our table to watch as we ate:



Seeing as how these Sparrows seemed quite comfortable being so close to humans, we decided to conduct an experiment. I got my camera ready, Mom held out one of her french fries, and we all waited to see what would happen. We really didn't have to wait for very long:



In these next two pics, you can see how the Sparrow twisted from side to side as it attempted to break off a piece of the fry:





A different Sparrow using his wing to get a bit more oomph behind his pulling:



A female Sparrow doing the same thing:





I kept this one a wide shot to show how the other birds were just hanging out, seemingly content to wait their turn:



Back to a closer view of a female Sparrow doing her darndest to get herself a piece of that fry:







It got to the point where she actually swiveled her head around 180° during her efforts:



And after this last twist, she finally managed to snag her prize:



Finally, a couple of shots of a another female working on a fry that I thought came out rather well:





Stay tuned for a look at some photos I took while I was holding a french fry with one hand and working my camera with the other...