Saturday, March 6, 2021

Still Stuck on Chickadees

 With spring just around the corner. The signs of spring are here. I've spotted two butterflies and the trees are starting to bud out. Down below in the valley fruit trees are blossoming and I have spotted daffodils flowering out as well.  I'm hoping to get some different birds to photograph. Right now the only  birds showing up are the hummingbirds. I've been spotting more and more in the backyard. Right now the only birds coming to my feeder are Chestnut-backed Chickadees, Steller's Jays and Dark-eyed Juncos. Though I spotted a Varied Thrush in our pond bathing and I heard a Spotted Towhee. 

This morning in the backyard I created a set up with a single willow twig clamped up next to a single spout bird feeder filled with black sunflower seed.  After a bit of a wait a gang of Steller's Jays came by. They were way to big to even land on the twig. They kept jumping up to the feeder and snagging seed from the opening. After they left a western Gray Squirrel arrived. I asked it to leave about five times. It would leave but it kept coming back when it couldn't spot any danger due to the fact that I was hidden behind my window hide. After about three hours the Chickadees started coming in. They were just the perfect size for the twig. I managed to create a doze images of which only a couple were nice enough to share. All of the images were taken with my Canon EOS 7D MKII camera with a Canon 100-400mm V.1 lens mounted on it. For flash I was using a Canon 550 EX Speedlight set to - 1 1/3rd stops. My camera settings were AV mode, ISO 800, F8.0 at a  variety of shutter speeds due to the changing light. God's love and blessing to all, chris



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