Back in black

Just wanted to share some photos of a black squirrel that's been stopping by my feeder for a little over a month; I don't know if the April day I took these was the first time it was here, but it was the first time I happened to notice it.

Scouring around underneath my feeder:

And when it went up the tree that's just to the right of my window; I did my best to compensate in Photoshop for the reflection on the right side of the frame that hindered my attempts to get a clear shot, but it's still slightly evident in the finished products:

One last close-up for the road:

Lady Slippers

Well, tonight my mom told me that if I didn't update soon there would be dire consequences, either for her computer or for me. So, in order to ensure my continued good health, a couple of photos I took a week or so ago of some yellow Lady Slippers growing at the edge of their property. I didn't notice it at the time, but there also a single dandelion seed in the lower left of this image:

A closer look:

Welcome aboard

Taking a break from Hawaii pics to share some photos I took over the weekend of a couple of birds that visited my birdfeeder for the first time. Or, at least, the first time I was sitting there with my camera ready.

First up, a European Starling:

As you can see, it's a bit large to sit comfortably on any of the perches, so it kind of has to tuck itself in a bit:

A photo that shows how wide the Starling can open its mouth, much more so than most birds; one of the Starling's primary methods of hunting insects is to stab its beak into the ground, pry open a small hole, and stare down at the tip of its bill to see what bugs it may have uncovered:

I liked how the bird's beak was backlit in this shot:

I thought this one provided a nice look at the plumage that gives the Starling its name:

Digging in to grab a bite to eat:

Success! And I also love how the sunlight brings out the iridescence of its feathers in this particular shot:

Showing off its prize to me:

An incredibly lucky catch of the peanut going down the hatch:

One last beauty shot of our Starling:

The second newcomer to my feeder is the Red-bellied Woodpecker. And it just happened to perch at an angle that allowed me some nice shots of the patch of feathers that give the bird its name:

Proudly displaying the pistachio it pulled from the feeder:

Another visit, another morsel—this time a peanut:

Finally, a closeup I thought came out really nicely:

Kauai 2012: Lighthouse visit the first, part 1

I may or may not have gone a little nuts with the picture taking during my visits to the Kilauea Lighthouse this year, which may or may not have left me with a boatload of photos to go through. My first visit of our trip will likely take me three posts to cover


To start things off, photos of various Red-footed Boobies I saw over the course of the day. With this first one, I really liked how the bird looked against the blue water:

Caught this one with its mouth open:

How I managed to capture this one looking right at me, I'll never know:

I liked how this bird was backlit, making the wing bones more visible:

I know this is very similar to the photo I started with, albeit with the water in the background being a darker shade of blue, but I liked how it came out so much I couldn't resist including it:

Loved the combination of colors in this Albatross photo:

Just a touch of lens flare on this one, but I think the overall effect works quite well:

The lighthouse itself; trying to take a shot that doesn't have people in the foreground is nearly impossible, so I felt fortunate to snag one with a fairly minimal human presence:

What made this first trip to Kilauea particularly special to me was the presence of several female Great Frigatebirds flying around and over the lookout point. In the past, my photos of these birds have involved a fair amount of distance between me and them, and thus not a lot detail in the final product. On this day, though, they were flying lower than I'd ever seen before; between their lack of altitude and my new, slightly stronger zoom lens, I finally got some good closeups of this breed of bird:

It's not perfectly in focus, but it was my best photo of one of the Frigatebirds from this particular angle:

Last year, I was fortunate enough to capture an Albatross using its foot to scratch its head mid-flight. This year, lightning struck again, this time with a Frigatebird. I didn't get nearly as many clear shots as with the Albatross, so I selected just a pair of photos for posting. Although, really, this first one pretty much says it all—you can practically hear it thinking, "Oooooh yeah, that's the spot...":

And with this one I liked how well you could see its claw against its head:

In addition to the scratching, I also captured some mid-flight preening:

Not the best shot focus-wise, but I thought catching the curve of its wing mid-flap made this one post-worthy:

A couple of my clearer photos:

I only managed one decent shot of this bird as she turned herself around:

I definitely lucked out with this one; the similar body/wing positions combined with the right-hand bird being out of focus makes, at least to my eye, for a really interesting bit of symmetry:

Finally, another fortuitous bit of lens flare produced one of my favorite shots of the entire day:

Kauai 2012: Cardinal shots

Sorry—I know it's been a while. After I returned home from Kauai, I was hit with the double whammy of jet lag and illness. Once I finally felt like myself again, I found myself a bit daunted by the number of photos I took, so naturally I dealt with it by procrastinating like my life depended on it.

At any rate, the posting of the rest of the Kauai pics might be a little haphazard; I'll still go through all of the photos for each day and figure out which I like, but I won't knock myself out trying to get all of my faves from a given day into one post.

Today's picks are some closeups I took of a male Northern Cardinal fairly early on in our stay. In general, the birds on Kauai are a lot less skittish around people than the birds around here (possibly because they have no natural predators, save the occasional house cat), and the Cardinals were no exception. I happened to take these particular shots from inside the house, but during our stay they would often come fairly close to us when we were sitting outside on the porch as well.

This first shot is from early in the day, when the light still had a slight golden tone to it:

Such a lucky catch with this shot—because the light was coming from behind the bird, you can see the spray of dust that occurred when he crunched the seed in his beak:

And couple of shots from later in the day; I really liked how the greenery in the background contrasts with the Cardinal's coloring:

This last shot is obviously not of a Cardinal, but as I don't plan on posting any other pics from this particular set I figured I'd include it in this post. As you can see, this dog had absolutely no problem getting comfortable as he waited for his human in the back of this pickup:

Kauai 2012: Feeding time at Bubba's

As was the case on one of our visits last year, today's lunch at Bubba's Restaurant involved feeding more than just ourselves. However, this time around just one bird dared come close enough to take a fry out of one of our hands: one of the ubiquitous Red Junglefowl that wander all over Kauai like crows do back in Vermont.

We've had a bit of a love/hate relationship with the bird this year, since, as I mentioned in my Grove Farm flowers post, during our first week or so the birds that roosted nearby decided that the hour between 3 and 4 a.m. was a fine time for their first vocalizations of the morning—and did so pretty much on a daily basis. After discussing possible solutions ranging from use of a shotgun filled with bird shot (much to my brother's dismay, the waiting period made this particular option a last resort) to lobbing water balloons at them. But since we kept forgetting to purchase balloons when we were in town, Greg finally got fed up enough that one night he just went outside and threw coconuts at them (important note: no chickens were harmed during the duration of our vacation). The next night, he used a broom to beat the bushes and make sure none were settling in to sleep too close by. 

The rooster we saw today at Bubba's, though, had apparently not yet gotten wind of Greg's fearsome reputation, as after some hesitation it first came close enough to take a few fries from my hand, and then from his. He photographed the rooster eating from my hand for his collection of vacation pics, and I, as you can see, then got some shots of it grabbing a fry from Greg's:

Getting closer...

Almost there...

Success!!

And while this Zebra Dove wasn't interesting in taking food from us directly, it had absolutely no qualms about hopping up on the table to snag crumbs right off of our plates while the four of us were all still sitting right there. Good thing we were finished eating, huh?