Bird-a-Palooza

One day this summer at the cottage, I awoke to find my better half had tripped off to town and left me to my own devices. As I stepped out onto the deck, I heard a birdly racket coming from the vicinity of the driveway and so proceeded to break out the camera gear.

To put my photo-haste in perspective, this summer I have been out around our small property and those of our neighbours when they weren't up, and have seen squat as far as wildlife of either the terrestrial or winged kind, so I was pretty pumped at the prospect of a few willing subjects.

To make an unnecessarily long story less long, quite a few birds of various types were going wild for the berries on the chokecherry tree next to the driveway. I spent a good hour snapping away, and I now present you with a few of the better shots. Do remember to click on the pictures if you want to see a larger view.





While going through the bird shots of that day, I also came across this one. Once the camera is out and ready, there is no reason not to spend a few minutes at the Hummingbird feeder. I clicked away and caught this little fellow in a yawn. I knew they ate insects, so I figured their beaks split down the middle, but I had never actually seen it.



Until my next visit to blogland ...

Don

Snappy Pictures

We have a hummingbird feeder at our cottage. We are inexplicably greatly entertained by the little creatures. I have seen pictures with a number of hummingbirds feeding at the same feeder, but the birds in our neck of the woods will have none of that. It is a constant battle for supremacy of the feeder whenever it is out and filled.

I have taken dozens if not hundreds of shots of the hummingbirds standing on the rail of the feeder in various poses, but a few weeks back, as an experiment, I set out to see if I could capture the hummingbirds in flight. We had been on vacation the entire week and the birds had gotten quite accustomed to our presence, so I was able to stand within 4 feet or so with the camera mounted on a monopod and they would still come confidently (or as confidently as hummingbirds do anything) to the feeder.

The birds would come to the feeder but they were so quick that I had to be pretty sharp to get them either coming or going. I spent quite a while snapping away and I got a few pretty good shots. That was Saturday.

On Sunday, I figured out a trick (or a dirty trick, I suspect the hummingbirds would say), and I removed the standing rail from the feeder. Now every time they came to feed, they would have to hover while drinking. This worked out much better, although the day clouded over and the shooting window was short. Here is one of the better shots I got. For the photo nerds, this was taken using a 50mm lens at F2.0 and 1/1600 of a second with the camera set to ISO 200.



I'll probably post more hummingbird photos in the future, but for now that's it.

Don

View From The Couch

I was sick with the flu a lot this winter for some reason. When I am down with the full-on hacking sneezing snoring influenza, I sleep on the couch so she-who-must-work-the-next-day can get a night's rest. I took the following picture very early one morning while not sleeping.


I liked this shot as it has an "antique" feel to it with the sepia tones and the black and white photo in the frame on the sofa table. I hope you like it too.

Don

Wandering Around

I work in a building built 20 or so years ago. I only know how old the building is because I used to bank in it back when I was a student and the building was a bank. My second work placement (co-op job for those in on the University of Waterloo lingo) was with a small company that specialized in remote sensing.

Moniteq was the company name, and they had two main "divisions"; one centred on designing and building remote sensing hardware and one was dedicated to remote sensing data analysis. I was a UW Physics Co-op student at the time and worked in the software group. I worked there for three 4-month terms while a student and also for 2 years after I graduated. I find it somewhat comforting to work in the same physical area again after so many years although that bank branch pissed me off and I'm glad they're gone.

JH, one of my friends and co-workers at Moniteq who worked in the hardware group, is now one of my co-workers in the new company currently occupying the former bank site. It is a very, very small world indeed.

Our company (check out Spectral Applied Research) designs and builds optical instruments. We are currently working hard at making and selling a Laser Merge Module which is a box that combines the output of between 2 and 5 diode lasers into a single beam which is fed into a fibre optic cable. The most common use of the light produced by the Laser Merge Module is to illuminate samples being examined with Confocal microscopes (and possibly with other types of microscopes). If you are crazy about light I highly recommend you contact our extremely smart and charismatic CEO, Richard Berman.

All of this is a really damned boring prelude to today's pictures. I went for a walk on one of the nature paths in close proximity to Spectral and discovered how incredibly mundane the wildlife
is that can stand being that close to bustling humanity. Basically you can narrow it down to two animals ...

Sparrows


... and Groundhogs


... neither of which strike me as anywhere near the top of the animal kingdom's mensa admissions list.

I did, however snap a dragonfly.


I particularly like dragonflies because they eat mosquitos. I also have an affinity for them as they seem to have an affinity for me. On several occasions dragonflies have landed on me and were not in the least disturbed by my moving around, seemingly feeling completely safe in my care.

That's it for today. Until next time,

Don