Worked the final shift today and closed the gates at 4 PM for the last time this season.
This week I am heading a little north to the Texas Hill Country to hopefully catch the spring wildflower bloom. Anyone out there with any suggestions for where to go and where to stay? I would love to hear from you!
Northern Cardinals
Male Cardinals continue their mating season animosities. There are as many as a dozen males in the yard at a time all winter and there are very few squabbles, but, with spring in the air, in the last week that has all changed.
And so, now, the last of the Salineno small bird shots … I promise.
Altamira Oriole and Green JayAltamira Oriole and Northern CardinalAltamira Oriole and Northern CardinalGolden-fronted Woodpecker and Female Northern CardinalsFemale Northern Cardinal
Golden-fronted Woodpecker and Green JayGolden-fronted Woodpecker and Red-winged Blackbird
Golden-fronted Woodpecker and Green JayGolden-fronted Woodpecker and Great KiskadeeGolden-fronted Woodpecker and Great KiskadeeGreen Jay
A Gathering of Green JaysGolden-fronted Woodpecker and Great KiskadeeNorthern CardinalsNorthern Cardinal and Long-billed ThrasherFemale Northern Cardinals
All my small bird images have been processed and most of the decent ones have been posted, so now (finally) on to new subject matter! Thanks for bearing with me.
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Hard to believe that five months here have passed so quickly, but with the recent heat, I would have to say, I am ready to head for cooler climes.
Salineno Birding Area
It dawned on me that I had never shown you the bird feeding yard here at Salineno, the scene of all these small birds in flight shots. So the image above shows you where all the action takes place and where 80 % of all the shots shown on this blog were taken.
Great Kiskadee and White-tipped Dove
The other 20% were taken next to where my motorhome is parked, just a hundred feet or so from the the feeding yard shown above.
Great Kiskadee and White-tipped Dove
On many of my two days off, I haul my portable post (feeding) prop over to my site and set up a small feeding area of my own.
Great Kiskadee and White-tipped Dove
Here I have no overhanging branches and shadows to contend with, as I do in the main yard. Also have a completely different type of background where I can get some nice soft pastel colors to show as a backdrop for the birds.
Great Kiskadee and White-tipped DoveGreat Kiskadee and White-tipped DoveGreat Kiskadee and White-tipped DoveGreat Kiskadee and White-tipped Dove
You can probably tell I kind of liked the interaction of this White-tipped Dove and the Great Kiskadee, set against that wonderful watercolor wash background.
Great Kiskadee and White-tipped DoveGreat Kiskadee and White-tipped DoveGreat Kiskadee and White-tipped DoveLong-billed Thrasher and Great Kiskadee
The Dove was not the only other bird to contest the Kiskadee for the peanutbutter/lard/cornmeal mix concealed in the top of the post.
Long-billed Thrasher and Great KiskadeeLong-billed Thrasher and Great KiskadeeGreat Kiskadee and Green jayLong-billed Thrasher and Great KiskadeeLong-billed Thrasher and Green JayGreat Kiskadee and Green jayGreat Kiskadee and Green jaysGreat Kiskadee and Green JayGreat Kiskadee and Green JayNorthern Cardinals
It’s that time of year and the males are fighting.
Northern CardinalsNorthern CardinalsAltamira Oriole and Green JayAudubon Oriole and Green Jay
” What you doing down there, Shorty !”
Northern Cardinals and Green JayNorthern Cardinals and Golden-fronted Woodpecker
A Couple New Closeups
Female Northern Bobwhite
We have two coveys of Northern Bobwhites that come in several times a day so I thought I ought to make some effort to get a couple nice ground level shots of these neat little birds. Above a female and below the male.
Male Northern BobwhiteLadder-backed Woodpecker
A male Ladder-backed Woodpecker with a nice soft green background. The background, up until this last week, would have been bare branches with bright sky holes, but now the mesquite trees are displaying their spring green finery.
Female Black-headed Grosbeak
And finally, a rare South Texas visitor, one female Black-headed Grosbeak, visiting us regularly over the past three weeks.
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We have had our first serious rainfall over the past two days, the first in four plus months to be exact. So that allowed me to catch up with some image processing, thus, yes, still more bird shots from Salineno.
Northern CardinalsAltamira Oriole and Female CardinalAudubon Oriole and Green JayAudubon Oriole and Great KiskadeeGreen jaysGreen jaysGreen jay and Great KiskadeeLong-billed Thrasher and Female Northern CardinalLong-billed Thrasher
Red-winged Blackbirds
Red-winged Blackbird Harassing Northern Cardinal
Red-winged Blackbirds are a very real problem here as elsewhere that birds are being fed, they want their share of the handouts, and obviously feel that their share is about 99% of the food put out.
Their constant, relentless attempts to mob the feeding area have admittedly gotten to me over the four months of attempting to keep them at bay. Their shrill trilling from the treetops around the yard and from their hidden perches in the bushes within the yard are like nails on a chalkboard to me.
Red-winged Blackbird and Green jayRed-winged Blackbird and Green jays
My absolute disgust with these birds has made me reluctant to include images of them on this blog, or anywhere else for that matter. But they most certainly are part of the “action” shots I have been taking, for they are the central characters in most of the conflicts over food here.
They arrive in numbers the second I turn my back or whenever I have my eyes locked to the back of my camera, driving off the birds we are trying to attract through sheer force of numbers.
The Altamira Oriole is normally the yards dominant bird, not really backing down to any other bird when challenged, but even they are eventually forced to yield when the Blackbirds descend in numbers.
An Unusual Red-winged Blackbird
Lastly, this rather different Red-winged Blackbird showed up a couple of weeks ago and I have no explanation for the odd coloring. Anybody seen anything like this or know the reason for it?
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My Nikon D810 camera died and was sent back to Nikon for warranty repairs a couple weeks ago now. Since then I have been concentrating on getting a serious backlog of image processing done.
Female Northern CardinalsFemale Northern Cardinal and Golden-fronted Woodpecker
I still have hundreds of nice action shots to sort through and process, even though I haven’t shot anything new in two weeks. As I go through these images, and think back to where I started this action shot business three months ago, I can’t help but think I have made some pretty decent progress. My time here in Salineno has proven to me that you actually can teach an old dog new tricks.
Great KiskadeeLong-billed Thrasher
Turns out that camera technique is only half the secret. Paying attention to how the props are constructed, where they are placed for bird flight paths, selecting the proper backgrounds, and knowing what time of day will yield which type of shot best, are every bit as important as knowing how to use the camera.
Female Northern CardinalsFemale Northern Cardinal
The images in this post were shot over several days with varying light conditions. Most of my favorite shots from here were taken between 7:30 and 8:30 in the morning or in the very last hours of useable light in the evening. All of the above shots were shot at that time of day, where the dark backgrounds and brilliantly lit subjects produce very dramatic images. Yet those are also the shots that require the most patience. Because of the dim light, it becomes difficult to maintain the shutter speeds necessary to freeze wing motion and it takes an awful lot of shots taken to get just a few good images, but I have found that when all the conditions are just right and the subjects catch that golden light just so, well, the results speak for themselves.
Golden-fronted Woodpecker and Female Northern CardinalAltamira Oriole and Female Northern CardinalAltamira Oriole and Female Northern CardinalTwo Female Northern CardinalsGreat Kiskadees
Another very different lighting condition, foggy mornings that yield very diffused light, produces an entirely different type of image, these soft, pastel like shots.
Great Kiskadee and Green jayGreat Kiskadee and Green jayGreat Kiskadee and Long-billed ThrasherGreat Kiskadee and Long-billed ThrasherLong-billed ThrasherAudubon OriolesGolden-fronted Woodpecker and Female Northern CardinalGreat Kiskadee and Female Northern CardinalAltamira Oriole and Great KiskadeeAltamira Oriole and Northern CardinalAltamira OriolesAltamira OriolesAltamira Oriole and Audubon OrioleAudubon Oriole and Female Northern Cardinal
Midday produces the best light for freezing motion and thus some of the sharpest shots are taken then, though the bright backgrounds add little to the images.
Audubon Oriole and Female Northern CardinalAltamira Oriole and Green JayAltamira Oriole and Green JayGreat Kiskadee and Female Northern CardinalGreen Jay and Female Northern Cardinal
The weather here at the start of March has me itching to head north for a change of scenery , routine, and some more comfortable temperatures. March 20th has been announced as the closing date for birding at Salineo, so I begin my countdown to departure, hoping that Nikon gets my camera sent back to me in time to leave on schedule. I hope to be able to catch some of the Texas springtime wildflowers as I head north and west from here.
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