Backyard Morning

Today I took the day off work to attend a conference, but since it doesn’t start until noonish, I decided to take the chance to spend the morning in my backyard and discover what critters frequent the feeders in the AM.

I’ve noticed the squirrel a few times now.  He seems to live in the neighbor’s yard, but occasionally comes over to sneak some of the peanuts and such that I leave out for the blue jay.  Here, he is on the neighbors fence and seems to be cursing the dove that is standing watch on my fence, baring his way to my yard.  Truth is, when he comes over, the doves scatter, so they really aren’t much of a defence.

The blue jay showed up for a brief second.  I’m getting closer to getting a very good shot of him, but in this one, I just cut to tip of his tail off.  And yes, there are two peanuts in his mouth.  How long before he realizes that there is no threat to him here and takes him time.  Then I’ll be able to aim and shoot much better shots of him.  I look forward to that t day.

Next, the male cardinal showed up but spent most of the time up in the tree above the feeder.  I don’t know, maybe I have the only birds around here that just aren’t hungry in the morning.  In any case, I got a shot of the bird in its natural habitat: a tree.

And finally, seems that I can get all the shots of doves that I want, and then some.  They guys just hang around all the time.  They were even hanging around my yard long before I ever put up the feeders.  In any case, I realized that normally shoot them from the side, but when this one looked at me straight on, he seemed to be saying to me, “What are you looking at?”  To which I replied, “Snap!”

That was it for the morning shoot.  It was very windy and cloudy, so maybe that kept the birds away.  I’ll have to try again.

Shots taken with Canon 7D, EF600Lf/4IS