Wild Bird Pictures

[Taceas]

I just get through whining that I've never really had a good chance to view an Oriole on another forum. What shows up today at my hummingbird feeder? A Baltimore Oriole!

The moment I grabbed the camera and got close to the window for a picture, it flew off. So I took the opportunity to grab an orange from the fridge, slice it in half, and skewer it onto a bird feeder hook. I wait and wait, and about 15 minutes later, it returns to feast on the orange.



The Bluebirds have returned to the nest box I mounted on the end corner of our deck, its a prime location for viewing them out the kitchen and patio windows. They don't seem to mind us, or the other bird feeders in close proximity across the deck. They have 5 eggs, which should have hatched by now.



Here is a particularly crappy picture of an Indigo Bunting feeding out of one of my finch feeders alongside a Goldfinch. These guys are extremely skittish, the slightest movement and they fly off. Folks who live in the country might recognize these little guys, as they typically hang out near gravel roads. I usually find them sitting in the road eating seeds, gravel, and car struck insects, which is a particularly dangerous activity, I've seen several smooshed on the road.

They can be differentiated between Bluebirds by the lack of a red breast, smaller size, and in the sunlight their blue is a truly unnatural shade of blue. They're actually black in color, but their feathers refract sunlight into blue wavelengths. Hopefully they'll keep visiting the feeders so I can photograph one in the sunlight.



This is a male Rose Breasted Grosbeak. They're typically transients in our area, their breeding range is from Bloomington, IN on northward. But I've had two or three pair of them hanging around my safflower feeder for the past month, so maybe I'll get lucky and they'll like it here well enough to stay. The females look similar to female House Finches, only are larger and have a whitish stripe over their eye.

[ArpeggioAngel]

Very cool pictures! I love birds and miss the smaller birds I used to see up north. We do get some sparrows and finches down here, but mostly what I see are the bigger wading water birds. I especially love that shot of the Baltimore Oriole.

[galenwbritt]

Awesome Misty........thanks very much for posting those. We currently have about 5-6 feeders/houses along our back fence and so far all we are getting are a few Cardinals, some regular Sparrows and some big and fat Whitewing Dove. I have changed the seed to three different kinds but can't seem to attract anything else. We live in the very back of the subdivision so right over our back fence is nothing but fields. Think I will try the black-oil sunflower seeds next time as it is supposed to just be for Cardinals and other "pretty" ones.

Awesome photos and great coloration on your birds.

Galen

[dwyn127]

I've got cardinals galore, robins, red-winged black birds and a variety of finches.

Not near the color variety you have though. Great pics!

[chillicorn]

very nice! yeah i have a thing for birds too, currently i have a zebra finch pair and a lonely male canary.
jenna

[Joni Garcia]

Absolutely gorgeous bird pictures, Misty! The Baltimore Oriole is amazing.

[Taceas]

I replaced an orange today for the Orioles and within a half hour I had a new rare visitor...some sort of Tanager.

At first I though a Scarlet Tanager, but the wings were an olive green, not jet black like I've seen before. It's also not a female, as they're greenish yellow all over. There is a Summer Tanager in the area as well, but its reddish-orange all over with no greenish wings. I'm thinking it may be an immature male Scarlet or a male that's in the process of molting to his breeding plumage.

I sent the picture into our local Wild Birds Unlimited, as the owners are pretty good bird experts and do guided tours every year of local bird haunts, so we'll see what they say.

But it was gorgeous as could be, and my pictures just never turn out sharp with this newfangled camera. I can't get it zoomed in enough with this stock lens, so I have to crop it so you can see the bird. But you get the idea.