The bluebird of happiness flew up my, ah, nose. <G> For decades, I had kept a number of bird feeders in our back yard, as many as eight at a time. For much of that time, I recorded my visitors under a program run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I really enjoyed watching the birds enjoying my feeders.
In recent years, however, the deer and squirrels attracted by the bird feeders have become a bigger and bigger problem. We also had occasional visits by racoons and black bear, which were very destructive, not to mention dangerous. Three years ago we got a new puppy, and we have been trying very hard to train him to stay in our yard, so he could tun free, at least in that acre or so. The deer and other critters attracted by the bird feeders became a major nuisance, so very reluctantly I decided to give them up. The lack of bird feeders the last couple of years has greatly reduced the number of deer and squirrels in our yard, and made it a lot easier for our Malamute to enjoy playing in the yard. There has been a surprising side effect, however; there are a lot more birds nesting in our yard than before. I suspect that the more aggressive birds attracted by the bird feeders, like blue jays, cardinals, starlings, grackles and crows, had been intimidating smaller birds and discouraging them from nesting in our yard. Last year we had two bird houses that were occupied with small birds. This year, we had five occupied bird houses, plus a nest in a tree and one on one of the floodlights on my house. Better yet, for the first time in decades, we have bluebirds nesting in two of our bird houses. One of the bluebird houses is on the edge of the woods, and I see the birds infrequently. The other is close to the house, however, and we see them several times a day, often when we are at the pool or in the hot tub, which is quite close to the house. I have, of course, been trying to capture some images of the bluebirds, with little success. They are quite shy, and disappear as soon as they see my camera. (How do they know what I'm up to?) Even when I manage to sneak up on them, they are so quick in and out of the house that there have been very few opportunities. This weekend, I decided to give it yet another try. I set the tripod up on the deck, but they saw me and kept hidden. After an hour of no sightings since I brought out the camera and tripod, I gave up. As I was putting my gear away, I had an idea: They don't seem to mind us when we are in the hot tub, so why don't I try hiding behind the hot tub, resting the camera on the cover? I knelt behind the hot tub and set up the camera. after a few minutes, the female flew out of the house, and back in a few minutes later, but she was too quick. Besides, I couldn't get in a position to focus properly through the view finder or even the LCD. I pre-focused on the surface of the bird house, and waited, with my finger on the shutter release and the camera set on multiple images. After about 20 minutes, my back was aching, but suddenly the male put in an appearance. I fired off several rapid-fire shots, and then tried to follow him when he rested in a tree and then on the top of the dog run. I wasn't able to get a good sharp image of the male, so I plan to try again this weekend. This is the best I have been able to manage so far: http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=17830976&size=md Comments are appreciated. Dan Matyola http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/danieljmatyola -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
