Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘bird’

Pretty little bird

Posted in Birds, commentary, Humor, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged , , , on April 8, 2013| 8 Comments »

Spring has complicated my life when it comes to bird identification. I started photographing (and trying to identify) birds last fall, when many of the birds had already left the area. Over the winter, there was a limited set of birds that I gradually became accustomed to seeing and I learned to identify them. Even when we had lots of different kinds of ducks, I could look in the section of my identification guide and figure out what they were.

Spring has brought all kinds of new species that have left me baffled and confused. Some of the birders are all excited by the return of warblers, including the Yellow-rumped Warbler. I can’t even see the birds when they point them out to me, much less figure out what color the color of the bird’s rump.

Here’s a recent photo I took of a pretty little bird that I have not yet been able to identify. I’d welcome any hints about what kind of a bird it is.

little_bird_blog

To add insult to injury, leaves are starting to appear on the trees, which will future challenge my ability to identify birds. I may have to go back to photographing insects.

Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved

Read Full Post »

Bird on a little branch

Posted in Art, Birds, Nature, Photography, tagged , , , , , , on December 2, 2012| 7 Comments »

What is the main subject of this photo? I know that when I took it, I was intently focusing on the little brown bird. When I pulled the image up on my computer screen and cropped it, however, I became much more interested in the composition. The blurry background with faintly visible trees and the little branches of tree on which the bird has hooked his feet suddenly became of equal importance to me as the bird itself. I find the pose of the bird interesting, but I think its interest is magnified by the simple setting.

What do you think?

Brown bird on little branch

Brown bird on little branch

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

Read Full Post »

Little bird feeding in the wild

Posted in Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged , , , , , on October 10, 2012| 6 Comments »

When it comes to photographing birds, it doesn’t take much to make me happy. If I can get a clear shot of a bird with a relatively uncluttered background, that constitutes a good photograph for me.  By that low standard, this image that I took a week ago is a successful one. My bird identification skills are still so weak that I won’t even hazard a guess at what kind of bird it is, but I like this modest image of this little bird.

Little bird feeding in the wild

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

Read Full Post »

Bird with beautiful eyes

Posted in Birds, Flowers, Gardening, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 21, 2012| 6 Comments »

I was at a local garden when I happened to hear this bird singing. My bird identification skills are so weak at this point that I won’t even hazard a guess about what kind of bird he is (I seem to be wrong more than I am right, with the exception of really common birds like robins and cardinals). His song was pleasant, however, and his brown eyes were captivating. He was perched up high enough that the sky provided a clear background and the green leaves and bright red berries added some interest and color in the foreground, although they partially hide his body. I like the way the shot turned out and it required only a minimum amount of cropping.

I finally managed to get a decent bird image in relatively good focus. What happened? I’m learning that I need plenty of light with the camera and lenses that I have to get an optimal image and I need to avoid the extreme end of my telephoto zoom and aperture range too.  Most of all, I need to be really lucky.

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

Read Full Post »

Unidentified bird with impressionist background

Posted in Birds, Flowers, Gardening, Nature, Photography, tagged , , , on September 16, 2012| 2 Comments »

Do you ever take a photo and like the way the background turns out so much that the primary subject becomes of secondary importance?

I mentioned in an earlier post the difficulty I have in photographing birds. This was a shot from the same day I photographed the cardinal. I’m not really sure what kind of bird this is, but I like the fact that I got a relatively clear shot of the bird. More than that, though, I like the impressionist look of the background.

Can anyone identify this bird?

Unidentified bird

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

Read Full Post »