Red Shouldered Hawk, I finally photographed a hawk. Well, I photographed one flying quite a while ago. Not sure what kind it was. But these two sat so nice for me as I was walking along the road underneath them.
At first I went out without my camera for my morning walk. Which I had told myself many times to not do that. So these two landed in a tree in front of me first when I did not have a camera. I continued my walk and they landed in another tree above me.
So I stopped and said, “Fine, I am going to go get my camera and you two better still be here when I get back. ” As I was saying it to them.
Usually they don’t do what I ask them to do, but this time they were still there. It is early morning so they have a warm glow to them from the sun just coming up and then to get a pair of them is quite a treat for me to add to my bird count.
My Favorite Bird of Birds, The Pelican. When in the south, one must go see the brown pelicans. Not only are they amazing to watch catching fish and landing on water. They can have a comical look to them as well, especially when they look right at you.
I was down by the water and these to characters were following me as I walked along the dock. They are looking for a hand out in the way of free fish. Which I did not have.
So I actually laid down on the dock and put my camera right above the water as they inched closer to see what it was. Which enabled me to get this nice photo of them at their level. I just love photographing these guys.
The Mocking Bird, I am not sure how they came up with this name. Except the fact this bird here is in a small tree outside of our camper every morning. I don’t always think to look in the tree when I take my dogs outside in the morning, but when I get to close this tree, it lets out a shriek of a sound that makes me jump every time.
I believe this tree is hers and she doesn’t like me getting to close, maybe just with the dogs. I took my camera out and stood right under her and took these photos and it kind of looks like she is eyeballing me.
Print Your Photos, as you may realize, I take a lot of photos, I mean a lot. But what do I do with all these photos you might ask. Well, besides sharing them with all of you here on blogging, I do sell photos across the internet on different websites.
Adobe photos is a great place to sell photos and a lot of my art work I create as well. Sometimes the photos go for less then a dollar and sometimes I get surprised when one sells for much more than a dollar. That is part of the fun, seeing the sales pop up.
But I don’t just put photos on the web, I do like to print some of my own to hang on the wall to be enjoyed by us everyday without having to look at the computer.
I print mine at the store called Walgreens, they do a very nice job and pretty cheap, I print some to go in frames but like this one below I printed it to a 30×17 and stuck it to a print board you can buy at any craft store. I hung this one in our RV.
My image sizes to print on average is 5500×3800 pixels with resolution of 300 px. For larger prints I use 6000 x 4145. There is an entire mathematical formula when trying to decide how to print your photos from the web. For example;
How to calculate image size – Quick summary
And that’s really all there is to it! To figure out the image size, just follow these simple steps:
1. Multiply the width and height of the image, in pixels, to get the total pixel count. 2. Multiply the total pixel count by 3 to get the image size in bytes. 3. Divide the number of bytes by 1024 to get the image size in kilobytes. 4. Divide the number of kilobytes by 1024 to get the image size in megabytes.
It can be confusing, but the new cameras take such high quality photos these days. One just has to print some out from what ever camera you have and see what results you get.
So I highly recommend everyone to print some of your own photos if you take them. Why let them just sit on the world wide web. Have fun with your photography.
Young Turkey Vulture, we are at a campground this weekend that has plenty of turkey vultures hanging about. Mainly because people feed the stray cats here and then these hungry birds come down from the trees and eat the left over cat food.
Nothing goes unnoticed by these birds, I even saw 3 young ones grab a empty bag of cat food off the top of a garbage can to see if there was anything left for them. Pretty smart 🙂
Update on this post, thank you to Andrew who left a comment on this post mentioning that this first photo of a turkey vulture could be a black turkey vulture and after looking it up, I agree. So I added this bird to my over all bird list bringing it up to 153 birds photographed. Thank you Andrew,
The Meadowlark, well I finally got a photo of this colorful bird. I didn’t think I was going to get a shot of one when we were out west. We were actually starting to head back east when I thought I had ran out of time to see one of these birds.
We stopped at a rest area and I heard this beautiful bird sound at the back of the rest area and low and behold it was this bird here. I went back in and grabbed my camera just as it was flying away and was able to get these few shots.
Red Bellied Sap Sucker, this colorful bird I photographed when I was out west. I have not taken many bird photos this past summer after we got home. We were to busy preparing for winter and just enjoying being home and not moving.
I can’t wait to start photographing wildlife again, I just haven’t seen much the last few weeks. A lot of beautiful landscapes for now.
Difference Between Bill & Beak – Not a thing—the words are synonymous. Ornithologists tend to use the word “bill” more often than “beak.” Some people use “beak” when referring to songbirds with pointed bills, and “bill” when discussing birds like ducks with more fleshy beaks. However, both words are used in reference to a wide variety of species.
They do serve an important purpose for each species from;
short thin bills for insect eaters,
short thick bills for seed eaters,
long thin bills can be for probing flowers for nectar or probing soft mud for worms and shellfish,
strong hooked bills for tearing meat.
Or they can be used to just goose the bird in front to get off the post.
Two New Birds – we went to a nature preserve in the state of Washington and I was able to photograph these two little beauties. Now I would love to be able to tell you what kind of birds they are. But I do not have my bird book in front of me and I wrote the names down in a notebook a while ago, but can’t find that.
So if anyone knows you can leave a comment below.
I have been taking videos of the birds at my feeder this month and these 3 are a family. The one in the middle is equivalent to a teenager and it kept trying to ask the other two to feed it. So I am going to say it is mom and pop, but they ignored junior and flew off to let him figure it out. You can see his reaction in the video. White Squirrel and Blue Jay
While I was filming the bird stand, this beautiful bird decided to take a break on my camera as it was filming the birds above.
I Found These Photos that I had not edited yet. I had shared a couple of them quite awhile ago but I found more as I was cleaning up some of my photo files. This bird is the Vermillion Fly Catcher and we saw this one at Big Bend National Park in Texas a few months ago.
Technology is sure nice when it comes to organizing all the photos that I take. But even with it, I lose track of some of them. Luckily one only has to enter a word in the search bar to find things I have forgotten about.
I have a video down below or you can click on this link to hear some bird sounds of two different places where I was videoing birds in their area.
Importance of Oil Rigs for Hummingbirds, I was doing some research about the migration of the Ruby Throated Hummingbird and found some new information I had not read before.
Ruby-throats do not travel in flocks during hummingbird migration. Instead, each bird follows its own instincts on appropriate departure times and routes.
Scientists believe that each hummingbird begins its migration in response to environmental triggers. One trigger is the changing level and angle of sunlight. Another trigger is believed to be a drop in available natural food. As these signals continue to activate, the hummingbird makes its preparations and eventually departs.
On their northward trip, most have reached Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula by February. In this lush jungle, they begin to feast on insects as they prepare for one of the toughest migrations for any bird. Each year, thousands of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds fly over the open water of the Gulf of Mexico rather than follow the longer shoreline route.
These brave little birds will fly non-stop up to 500 miles to reach U.S. shores. It takes approximately 18-22 hours to complete this amazing solitary flight.
Some hummingbirds aren’t strong enough, though, as many oil riggers and fishing boat crews can attest.
Every year, exhausted Ruby-throated Hummingbirds take temporary refuge on offshore oil rigs and boats floating in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. These birds rest a while before bravely launching back into their flight across the open water.
When they return south, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds will follow the same daring migration route in reverse. They’ll charge up their energy reserves in the southern U.S. and then zip across the gulf toward their winter home. That’s two big, non-stop trips each year for Ruby-throats – you have to admire their tenacity!
How I Edit Bird Photos, these Ruby Throated Hummingbirds have been very active this past weekend. I have been sitting on my porch with my camera set on continuous high speed trying to get some good photos of these fast little birds in flight before they leave here and head south for the winter.
But because they are so fast, one can’t really get great compositions without doing a little post processing in the editing room.
So here are a couple of examples of how I crop a photo of these hummingbirds. The first photo is the original, the bird is off center and there are to many distractions with the wood post and the feeder to really see the bird itself.
I love the detail of its tail feathers in this shot, so I cropped everything out and brought up the exposure a bit because its body is in the shadow and now you can see a bit of its green color around the wings.
The sun is off to my right in these photos, so the bird is facing me and you can’t really see its beautiful throat colors without the sun shinning directly on them.
So again, I raised the exposure a bit in photoshop and used a vertical format for cropping to showcase the bird itself, now the one thing this composition is missing is its other wing. But, like I said they are so fast, we can’t see the wing movements to shoot at the exact time. Only high speed camera settings can do this and we can only take what we get.
If you notice the tail feathers are clear but the wings have a little motion blur, the average wing beat is around 53 beats per second and I have the camera set up at 1/4000 of a sec shutter speed.
It is so fun trying to get good shots of these beautiful little birds.
This photo below, I wasn’t sure I could isolate the bird from the feeder because it is so close to it. It is quite the challenge to photograph these birds flying away from you and to be able to see the tail feathers from the top like this photo.
Photoshop is a great tool for editing, along with light room. Again, I used a vertical format and really like the diamond shape light spot behind the bird. All these photos are taken with my camera set to 1/4000 sec shutter speed, f8, ISO 1200 and 600 mm lens.
Pretty in Blue, One of the most defining features of a bird is its plumage. But as complex and capable as feathers are, they don’t last forever: They begin to break down after some time, forcing its owner to replace them. Which is the process of molting.
Which usually starts around July and August, depending on the species.
As a result, a bird’s appearance may radically change through the molting period, or just look odd and patchy.
The blue jays are back in my area and some of them are still missing their crown feathers. This one in the picture is a young blue jay and its blue feathers are a color all onto themselves. Such a pretty blue.
Molting is a fascinating behavior, just like migration and breeding, and it’s one of the vital parts of a bird’s life. So if you see some song birds and they appear to be missing a few feathers this time of year. Don’t worry, they are probably molting and growing some new ones soon.
The Rubies are Back, now I am still posting photos from our trip around the states from this last winter. But we are home now so I have to throw in some photos from here, like my favorite little Ruby Throated Hummingbirds that visit my flowers here every summer.
They are hard to photograph, they are constantly chasing each other.
On occasion I can find them sitting almost still on my garden fence. But the camera still has to be set at a very high shutter speed to get a glance at those wings that move so fast.
Songs and Sounds of Desert Birds, I just posted a video on my you tube channel highlighting all these wonderful birds and the sounds they make. The bird one hears the most is the White Winged Dove, but the most interesting one I think is the Gambel’s Quail.
A New Hummingbird From Washington, Well I finally photographed a new hummingbird. I have only ever seen one species of hummingbird and that is the Ruby Throated. We just happened across another nature preserve in Washington when we were there and found two new birds, no 3 new ones, including this hummingbird. Bird count is 152.
One of the feistiest hummingbird in North America. The brilliant orange male and the green-and-orange female Rufous Hummingbird are relentless attackers at flowers and feeders, going after (if not always defeating) even the large hummingbirds of the Southwest, which can be double their weight.
Rufous Hummingbirds are wide-ranging, and breed farther north than any other hummingbird. Look for them in spring in California, summer in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, and fall in the Rocky Mountains as they make their annual circuit of the West.
Spring Birds, I am seeing a lot of Orioles this year, I believe this one below is a female oriole. Not sure which one, there are a few different species of them.
The Pileated Woodpecker is one of the biggest, most striking forest birds on the continent. It’s nearly the size of a crow, black with bold white stripes down the neck and a flaming-red crest.
Look (and listen) for Pileated Woodpeckers whacking at dead trees and fallen logs in search of their main prey, carpenter ants, leaving unique rectangular holes in the wood. The nest holes these birds make offer crucial shelter to many species including swifts, owls, ducks, bats, and pine martens.
Spring is in the Air, the sun shine really brings out the colors to some of our song birds. Where in the shade they may look like plain old black birds. But when the Sun shines, the vibrant colors do as well.
I think this one is checking out his toe nails, might be wanting a little pedicure. 🙂
Colorful World With Ducks, nothing more colorful then ducks in the spring. I am not sure what is up with these ducks that look like they are wearing top hats. But the vibrant green colors are always so beautiful in the spring.
Here is a fun little video of these ducks swimming at this natural spring pond. Called; Synchronized Diving
150 Birds Photographed, what a fun year for me photographing birds. So many I have never even heard of as well. That is what I like most about birding, like this bird below, the Avocet, I get home and have to get my bird book out right away to see what the name is.
Video of a Beautiful Peacock below or click on this link here; The Peacock, I came across this bird at a mercantile store strutting his stuff. Beautiful birds.
We were camping by a lake and I was just sitting there enjoying the view and this bird below popped up out of the water. It is called Clarks Grebe. Such unusual names for some of these birds.
Plus, I have spotted my first magpie. This bird is hard to photograph, they are fast and don’t sit around to long and always seem to be very far away. They are actually a lot bigger than I thought they would be.
The King Bird, these are great little fly catching birds. You normally find them perched low on something and then they swoop down and catch a bug. I think the soft yellow on this bird is so pretty.
End May With a New Bird Count, 142 birds photographed. Remember, there are over 900 birds species in North America. So I have a long ways to go.
This first new bird to my eyes is the Western Tanager. What a bright colored bird, orange and yellows. We were camped at a small campground and I went for a walk and saw all these bright colored birds. I went over to the fence where they were all flying about to see what was attracting them all to this area and come to find out the owner had taken the honey comb trays out of his bee hives and these birds were loving that.
Next is the Bullocks Oriole, it was getting in on the action of the honey as well.
New Bird From the Bahamas, this is the Eurasian Collared Dove, with very bright red eyes. This chunky relative of the Mourning Dove gets its name from the black half-collar at the nape of the neck. A few Eurasian Collared-Doves were introduced to the Bahamas in the 1970s. They made their way to Florida by the 1980s and then rapidly colonized most of North America.
One of the things I like to use if available when I am out looking to photograph birds, is to use a bird blind. Some of the campgrounds have them built in the wooded areas, plus you can make one your self at home if you want to. Here is a link to LLano State Park in Texas, that actually had 4 bird blinds to use when you visit this park.
