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...

Here comes Peter Cottontail...

In honor of the holiday, some photos I took toward the end of February, when I was staying with Kaylee at my parents' house, of a Cottontail rabbit.

Poking its head up over the edge of the porch:



Sorting through the thistle seeds at the base of the blue spruce:



Pretty much the classic chocolate bunny pose, no?





After I'd taken many pictures of the rabbit's back and sides, it finally turned enough for me to get a decent shot of its face:



Finally, one of the few decent photos I got of the rabbit as it made its way out from under the blue spruce and across the backyard:

Horses

My route to work takes me past a small farm, and, for whatever reason, as I was driving home yesterday the way the afternoon sun backlit one of their horses caught my eye. Enough so that I ended up turning around and driving back so I could try taking a few pictures.

This is the first one I took of the horse in question; I know the fence wiring running across the frame isn't ideal, but otherwise this is pretty much the exact visual that grabbed my attention to begin with:



The palomino was by no means the only occupant of the pasture—a pinto and a dark brown horse were also hanging around that end of the field. After some initial curiosity on the part of the brown and palomino horses, they pretty much ignored me and went back to grazing. But when I noticed this bit of symmetry, I decided a few more pictures were in order. I was a little wary of getting too close to the fence, as I was assuming it was electrified, but by crouching down a bit and using the zoom I was able to work around the wires:



A few minutes later, the pinto was kind enough to adopt the same pose for me:



Finally, even though it was among the first I took I saved this shot for last, as it's one of those happy accidents that ended up being my favorite photo of the bunch—I was going for another shot entirely when the horse decided to move on me:

Short but sweet

Just wanted to share a couple of photos today; I actually took them the same day as the Robin photos in my last post, but since I had so many images to share it made more sense to me to save these for a separate entry.

I was kneeling in Kaylee's favorite chair (and you should have seen the puppy-dog eyes she kept giving me while I was taking up all the space on her favorite perch), window open, camera ready, and watching the Chickadees, Juncos, and the occasional Robin flit in and out of the branches of the blue spruce when I happened to notice the arrival of this female Cardinal. I was thankful I had the windowsill to prop my elbows on as I photographed her, especially since the light was getting low—I'm sure it's a big reason why these two shots in particular came out as sharp as they are:

Rockin' robin

Even though Mother Nature keeps toying with us here in New England, both the calendar and the recent influx of Robins indicate that spring has finally arrived. While Robins are occasionally spotted during the winter months, it's when we start seeing handfuls of them dotting yards and fields that we know the warmer weather is indeed on its way.

When I visited Mom and Dad Monday night for dinner, there were at least a dozen or so Robins either searching the ground for food or flying in and out of the trees bordering the property. Or, in the case of this bird, taking advantage of the cover offered by the blue spruce to do a little preening:





However, the lawn was where the real action took place. Mom and I were actually checking out a Red-winged Blackbird (which tend to be a fairly rare sight near their place) when she noticed a female Robin working on pulling a worm out of the ground:



As it turns out, it was a really long worm, which meant a great chance for me to get some fun shots:



She kept pulling, and the worm kept coming:





Success at last:





After she finally got the worm free, the Robin spent the next little while hopping from place to place with it. Each time she stopped, she'd peck at the worm a bit before picking it up and finding a new spot to begin the process all over again:







I kept this one a wide shot because I liked the glimpse of the two Robins streaking past:



Finally, it was dinnertime:



Kind of looks like a post-meal belch, doesn't it?:



Not only did I really like how this shot came out, but you can also see how distended the Robin's crop is after her super-sized meal:



Finally, while the Robin in the lower left corner of this image was my intended focus, the two Robins having a slight disagreement on the right definitely ended up stealing the show: