Bird-watching

A Rose-breasted Grosbeak showed up this afternoon, too. So I dusted off the camera and lay in wait.  Couldn't catch a Grosbeak, but there were other familiar friends and a surprise.

This fellow on the left is a white-throated sparrow, that yellow spot I think makes it Zonotrichia albicollis, per the Peterson Field Guide.


All the photos here are with the 400mm f/5.6 with a 12mm tube. The tube reduces the minimum focus distance.  Even so, everything here is a major crop of the original frame.

This is an old friend, the Northern Cardinal, a male Cardinalis cardinalis.


















Peterson's Guide illustrations are not good; though this is a long-familiar bird, I keep forgetting its name.  I believe it is a mourning dove.

In the picture above it is scrunched up; a more relaxed pose on the left.

The Downy Woodpecker.

A male American Goldfinch.

The House Sparrow.

















Didn't get a clear shot of this chap; I think he is a white-breasted nuthatch.   Not a common visitor, though I've seen him before.

And a surprise!  The hummingbirds are back.  No doubt because I have a few acquired-this-morning plants from the nursery with red flowers (geraniums, in case you wanted to know).

I think I saw at least two males, and dunno how many females.  You know the male by its iridiscent red throat that flashes when the light catches it just right.

The female ruby-throated hummingbird.

And the male ruby-threated hummingbird.




There were some other birds I didn't capture - a blue jay, a cowbird, chickadees and a titmouse.  There were robins on the lawn.   And as always, when I take out the camera, the usually present turkey vulture wheeling around in the sky is absent.  And of course, the Grosbeak which did not show up after I took out the camera.

But all in all, a good day.