Aerial antics

As we all know, my having dinner with Mom and Dad usually results in a boatload of photos—and today was no exception. So, without further ado...

A Goldfinch drinking from the fountain on the porch; you can see that his beak is almost fully immersed:



I'm also including the very next shot I took, because I realized that if you look closely you can see the water clinging to the Goldfinch's beak as he withdraws it, the surface tension not yet completely broken:



A Chickadee taking a bath later on in the evening:



Again, the very next shot on my virtual roll—I like how rumpled the bird looks post-dunk:



A Song Sparrow (I believe) perched in the blue spruce:



And now, the reason for today's post title. The hummingbirds were incredibly active while we were hanging out on the back porch, so I decided to try my hand at seeing if I could get some shots of them during their high-speed interactions. Which basically means I put my camera on the action setting, pointed it at the feeder, held the shutter release button down in rapid-photo mode, and hoped for the best. Happily, I ended up with some pretty solid shots if I do say so myself:









This one's pretty blurry, I know. But I liked how you see the male facing off with the bird directly in front of it while another bird hovers nearby:





I liked how all of the birds' wings were extended in this one:









The position of the female hummingbird on the left reminds me a bit of the swallow in the final photo of last night's post:







In other news, Esa has once again been joining us at the office this week; it's amazing how much he's grown since the last time we saw him:





And finally, a couple of Kaylee photos to close things out:

Birds on a wire

Today I found that even though I don't miss spending my whole day in Bennington, I did kinda miss the ducks. So after work I headed over to Whimsy Pond to see what sorts of birds might be hanging out there today. Alas, I didn't see any ducks—or anything in the way of waterfowl, actually—when I arrived. So I decided to photograph some of the asters I noticed along the bank:





A familiar bird cry caused me to start scanning the opposite side of the pond through my telephoto lens, and it didn't take me very long to spot the source:



There were at least four Kingfishers flying around at one point, but I only got a few halfway decent shots over the course of my time there:





In fact, the stars of today's show over at the pond were the swallows—there were dozens of them hanging out on the telephone wire strung along the road. Although this first shot was one I took right after they all decided to vacate said wire::



I swear, there were a few moments I wondered if I'd somehow wandered over to San Juan Capistrano:







Some of the swallows circling over the pond:



I tried to get some photos when the birds actually made contact with the water as they attempted to snare insects—this was about as close as I got:





The swallows tended to not stay on the telephone wire for very long, and would frequently hope over to perch in nearby trees for a few minutes:





I couldn't have lined them up any better if I'd been trying; in a way, it almost looks like a multiple-exposure shot of one bird coming in for a landing:



A variety of backlit shots I thought came out pretty well:









And in this last one I just really liked how you can see the swallow's feet reaching out as it prepares to land:

Twitterpated

No, the subject line has nothing to do with social networking; once you finish today's post, Google "twitterpated" and I think you'll easily figure out why I chose it.

Today was my final jury draw, and it also turned out to be my last day of jury duty service—of the three trials they empaneled jurors for, I didn't appear on the computer's randomly-generated list for two and was excused from the other. So, one last array of duck shots for the road...





I liked the little streams of water you can see coming from its nostrils:





Because of how dark the heads of these two ducks are, I actually wondered if these were a different type of duck than the Mallards I'd been photographing. But after noticing the usual grouping of blue feathers on their wings, I'm instead thinking that maybe they're juvenile male Mallards starting to get their adult coloring:







A lucky catch when the ducks decided to take off for parts unknown:



This time I spotted the turtle all on my own:





Oh, remember that deer last week that looked like she was either pregnant or had swallowed a bean bag? Yeah, I'm definitely leaning toward pregnant now:







I know you can see part of the chain-link fence in this shot, but I decided I actually kinda liked the effect:





Mom taking a well-deserved break:



Camouflage—you're doing it right:



I really liked this reflection:



And, just for fun, that same branch from the other side of the pond; amazing what a difference lighting makes, huh?



Finally, my fellow Toy Story fans will know exactly why I couldn't pass by this truck without taking a photo (I warped the license plate so as to try to preserve the anonymity of the juror/plaintiff/defendant/witness/employee who was at court today):

Eating like a bird

I spent a good portion of my day today doing laundry and taking care of some waaaaaay overdue housecleaning (my vacuum cleaner is still recovering from the shock of actually being used again). By the time I was finished, I didn't have a lot of energy left over for things like standing and walking, so all of today's photos are of different finches that visited my feeder over the course of the afternoon.

I believe this is a juvenile House Sparrow giving the Goldfinch a piece of its mind:



Another shot of the sparrow:



A couple of Purple Finches hanging out together,





A male Goldfinch:







And one last Purple Finch for you: