Category: Birds

Now Here’s a Real Hummer

Early in the year I was frustrated by my inability to get a picture of the elusive little hummingbirds that sashayed through our front garden, disappearing the moment a camera appeared.

I worked hard to win their trust, or at least to get them to totally ignore me, and now I have enough photos filling up my hard drives that I’ve started deleting the â€?”poorestâ€? shots.

What most intrigues, and frustrates, me, of course, about photography, particularly with the advent of Photoshop, are the infinite choices to be made in selecting and preparing a shot for â€?”publication.â€? Should I sharpen the image or blur the background? Should I adjust the colors? Is iridescent a color?

Given forty â€?”goodâ€? shots of a hummingbird, which do I choose to present. Do I go with the clearest photo? The most â€?”realisticâ€? photo?

Though I suspect most people might find this to be my best picture of a hummingbird

I really think this one

is the most â€?”realisticâ€? because it’s the way most of us truly â€?”seeâ€? hummingbirds as they dart from flower to flower, first here, there, then somewhere other than there, seldom stopping to say â€?”hello,â€? or even â€?”good bye,â€? cheeky little lads or lasses whose sole purpose seems to be to amaze with their herky-jerky aerobatics.

The penultimate question is what do I do with this sudden wealth of shots? Do I simply burn them to a DVD and forget them? Do I change the name of my blog to â€?”Humming Alongâ€? and feature my latest shots, accompanied by in-depth articles on hummingbirds and hummingbird lore?

Perhaps I’ll just ramble on a bit and use it as an excuse to fill up the screen with another one, or even two, of my hummingbird photos.

The Big Picture

Reading This Too this morning reminded me how easy it is to bring your old self with you when you finally manage to move to a new place, fully intending to leave the old self behind.

Even in the best of situations, not that I’ve ever been in such a situation, I suspect that no matter how fast or how far you’ve come once you stop you’ll discover much to dismay that your old self is right there with you.

My latest obsession is trying to get a picture of the elusive blue jay,

the one that despite nearly a week and a half and fifty plus pictures I still haven’t taken a picture I’m really satisfied with.

In trying to do so, I almost totally ignored the

moon that was merely a few degrees away from the Jay who demanded attention with his loud scolding.

Even worse, I nearly missed the miracle of

the small hummingbird suspended in mid-air simply because I already had a shot I was satisfied with.

If I’m not careful the delightful awareness bird watching has generated in me will be lost to the old self that drove me in the past, the one that constantly needed something I didn’t have, something I desperately needed to be happy until I had it and found that it really wasn’t what I needed after all, that it, like most of what I owned, was just one more burden to bear in a world already overburdened with possessions. I have to constantly remind myself that the point isn’t to get a “trophy” picture, well at least not the main point, but simply to enjoy the moment as fully as possible.

Ah, My Little Chickadee

After being told yesterday that what I’ve thought was a Junko for several years was actually a Black-Capped Chickadee, I was met this morning by Chickadees at Dawn when I went to Birdnote.

I was a little surprised to discover there’s actually a whole book, The Black-capped Chickadee — Behavioral ecology and natural history devoted to these small birds. Obviously I’m not the first person to notice them. Still, it’s highly unlikely I will ever read, much less purchase this particular book.

Though I originally started attracting birds to my garden as a natural way of controlling insects and of trying to make amends for my part in destroying wildlife habitat, now I feed them simply to see and hear them each day. A sack of bird feed a month seems a small price to pay for the beauty and joy they bring:

As common as grass,
as free as the air
lifting their wings,
black-capped chickadees
explode from the feeder,
fragments of nature
disappearing faster
than the human eye
can comprehend,
unwilling to pay
homage to any man,
even one bearing gifts.

A Small Brown Creeper

Following up on my newly-found interest in birds, last week I ended up at the Seattle Audubon’s society home page and from there at Birdnote, the home page of short podcasts on various bird species.

One of the first podcasts I listened to was Hazel Brown and the brown creeper, the story of a Seattle activist who was converted to a bird lover after observing the small, brown creeper on her first outing.

For me, the most remarkable part of the story was simply that there was a bird called the brown creeper that I could not remember ever seeing despite many years walking the Northwest woods. Even more remarkably, I spotted one of them on my very next walk, a walk I’ve taken nearly five times a week for the last two years.

I wasn’t more than two hundred yards into my Nisqually walk when I ran into another brown creeper climbing a large, moss-covered tree:

After these kinds of experiences, it’s hard not to begin to wonder exactly how much in life I’ve been missing. I’ve begun to notice just how many small birds there are that I have taken very little notice of before, and, even more remarkable, apparently they all have names, not that it’s always easy to match a name to a particular photo.

For instance, here’s a Warbling Vireo who seemed to spend most of his time flying a foot or two off the ground:

Here’s what I think is a Hammond’s Flycatcher:

Though he doesn’t look very different from what I’m guessing is a Western Wood-Pewee:

Just knowing names doesn’t seem too important. For instance, learning today that what I’ve been calling an Oregon Junko for several years is really a Black-Capped Chickadee didn’t change my love of these small birds. Being aware of the large number of tiny birds inhabiting the woods, listening for their songs and watching for their quick flitting as I walk the trail is important, though. This increased awareness transforms walking into an even richer experience.