...Oh, WOW!

Those of you who photograph wildlife can relate to that moment when you realize you are seeing something pretty special, and that you actually have your camera! Yep, I finally saw the male cardinal feeding his chick today AND I had my camera AND they were only about 15 feed away from me!!! So, this is SOOC with no crop. Unfortunately, it is a tiny bit blurry because I was at 400mm, handheld and I may have been shaking a bit with excitement (or not, who can say?) I had the camera on continuous shooting mode (thank goodness) so fired off a whole sequence of shots, starting with the youngster begging and culminating with the feeding. Oh WOW! What a wonderful thing to see - definitely one of life's little moments for me.

This is the second brood that my cardinal pair have attempted this summer. I suspect that their first attempt failed as I never saw any fledglings, but they have at least two from this attempt, a male and a female. I've seen papa with each of them at the feeders, but this is the first time I saw him feeding one of them. Mama may still be feeding nestlings as I see her at the feeder, but only for brief visits.

Still have a handful of hummers left, but today the cardinals had to take priority. I also saw my very first Purple Finch today! Very exciting. They look very much like the house finches, except the female has a white eyebrow. I had to check with my birder expert to be certain she was a purple. Although they are considered year 'round birds in NJ, they are not all that common here anymore.

If you would like to see a quick slide show of the cardinal papa feeding the young Miss, I've posted it on Flickr.

Thank you so much for the comments, hearts and stars on my hummer with his head in the salvia yesterday. I'll probably get a few more blips of them before they leave...

And, hey - it's Thursday! And you know what that means, right? Yep, it is almost the weekend!!!