Birds galore!

Today I saw (and photographed) more birds than I have in a long time. It was a very enjoyable day. This lovely Downy Woodpecker female looks quite pretty in large.

This morning, as I was talking to my mom, a Broad-winged Hawk landed in a tree near our dock. Well, I stammered... "gotta go, picture time" and dropped the phone. (Good thing she understands this sort of thing as a blipper herself.) These hawks are so aware of their surroundings, it's fairly hard to get a shot of one. But I snuck out the side door, commanded the dog to stay and tip-toed to the deck. I got 4 shots off before it flew away. Unfortunately, the spot metering metered off the brighter lake vs. the darker hawk (which I swear I had it aimed at...) and the bird was pretty underexposed. Thanks to Lightroom I was able to get it back to somewhat acceptable-at least now you can see that it is a hawk. ;)

Something about a rainy day seems to bring the birds down to a visible area of the trees in the woods. I saw and heard so many more than usual today and the oranges were more popular than ever. At one point I had Dad, Junior and Junior Miss all on the oranges at once. And later, I captured a sequence of images of Dad and Junior, one at each orange, doing synchronized eating - very funny. Mom wasn't part of the picture for most of the day, but then she came on her own later. (As I'm typing this both of the kids are having their bedtime orange snack.) The best shot I got of that family was a wet and weathered Dad. He looks a little worn out... but who can blame him with his two teens testing his patients all day long. ;)

Somehow, this downy female managed to stay dry and was my favorite shot of the day. (I haven't seen one of these birds in a while... maybe spring time.) Though, I was a little disappointed in the amount of noise in this one. But pushing it up to ISO800 will cause some noise for me. It's just a must on a rainy darker day. But hopefully, come Monday, I wont have to worry about that quite as much. I bit the bullet and ordered a new camera... let's hope it does what they say it will do... I'll tell you more on Monday. :))