Bird feeder

A couple of weeks ago, toward the end of a Saturday stint at work, I heard the sound of a crow cawing right out in front of the building. I took a peek out one of the windows, saw there were three crows less than ten feet away on the lawn, then grabbed my camera. It didn't take me too long to realize that one of the crows was a fledgling, still looking to its parent to provide its meals:



The three birds together:



The young one squawking away, hoping for some food:



I then got very fortunate, as the young bird and its parent not only came closer to the building but were facing right towards me as the adult obliged its child:











That's the young bird on the right; note that while the inside of its mouth is pink, the adult bird's mouth is as dark as its feathers:



One final shot, taken not 10 minutes after the above sequence, of the younger bird once again demanding to be fed. Clearly, a parent's work is never done...

I see trees of green

Not much to say about this one; I took it a couple of weeks ago while out for a walk with Kaylee, and really liked how it turned out if I do say so myself:

Cedar waxwings

I stayed over at Mom and Dad's for about a week and a half in June, and while I was there I managed to expand my already embarrassingly large assortment of unsorted photos to gigantic proportions. I'm going to try my best to do something about that, starting with a few shots I took of some of the Cedar Waxwings that spent a good deal of quality time plucking berries off a bush growing just outside the dining-room window:



To try and get some decent shots, I'd check on the bush periodically until I could see them moving around through the branches. Then I'd sneak out the front door, stand on the front step, and wait until they moved close enough to my side of the bush to get a clear look at them. Or as close to clear as I could manage:



Streeeeeeetch that neck out:



The berry has been successfully obtained:



And going down the hatch:





Even though the bird is mostly obscured by leaves in this last shot, I still liked how it turned out:

Sand crabs

A few more Kauai pictures today, taken on a somewhat overcast day when I noticed movement on the sand as I watched the ocean from our second-story lanai. I parked myself on the ground not too far from one of the freshly-dug holes that dotted the beach, and luckily the rain held off long enough for me to photograph some sand crabs—all I had to do was to stay still and wait for them to emerge:



As you can see, the sand on Kauai is much coarser than what those of us who grew up visiting Atlantic-facing beaches are used to, and as a result the crabs have adapted to the point where their coloring camouflages them almost perfectly:



With the crab in the above image edged a bit further out of its hole, you can see that one claw is significantly larger than the other; I presume the smaller one is a regrowth in process:



A look at the back of a crab as it makes its way back down into its burrow:



A wider shot to help provide a sense of how well the crabs blend into the landscape unless you get pretty close to them:



And one last shot of a crab in all its glory:

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...