A room with a view

wow! this looks like a good place . . .

. . . no wait . . . what the . . .

. . . five females together?! . . .

. . . I'm outta here . . .

I think these are common goldeneye (females). We scoured our bird books and decided that they fit the description, plus they will nest in trees (please, someone correct me if they are not). The first photo was taken just a week ago but the other four were last year at about this same time. Anyway, what is remarkable is that on that day, five of these birds landed on this tree snag and I was able to photograph them! I was holding my camera by hand, zoomed in at 200mm and through glass (shaky, shaky, shaky)! Just one of those things, there was no time to grab my tripod (I was not prepared), and a blurry photo is better than no photo when it comes to capturing what is going on around you in nature!
(I submitted these to a contest that our county was holding and they featured my photos in their newsletter).

Now I'm linking up to World Bird Wednesday at the Pine River Review

Natty Nuthatch

I'll be honest here - I had set my camera up to see if I could catch a Rosy Breasted Grosbeak (that furtive bird!) when suddenly this natty nuthatch appeared within my focus! and it seemed to freeze when it saw me. I very quickly took as many shots as I could (twenty-five maybe) and was so excited with my capture that I called it a night and went in. I applied a texture by Kim Klassen 'subtly yours' and a hue/saturation adjustment to calm down the background and then erased over the bird. Nuthatches have always reminded me of Grandpa from the 'Munsters' with their sleek peaked forehead and tuxedo-type markings. Apparently there are a lot of pet nicknames for nuthatches, but mine is Grandpa!



Linking up to World Bird Wednesday at 'The Pine River Review'