When spring begins

[jeeperman]

So do the birds. I had a half hour to burn between jobs today and thought I would see if I could get a little more proficient at my zooms limits. The light was horrible and flat with heavy overcast and off and on rain. But it was a good day anyway. C&C welcome.

Redwing Blackbird


Sparrow family I think..


Chickadee?


I was told this little guy is a Bush Tit. Here he gathered some fluff for his nest, which is what the next photo is. The nest is long a little longer that a football {American football } and hangs in the swinging branches of a willow tree.


Taking his score inside

[dnperfors]

Very nice shots Paul, what focal length did you use?

[MiniChris]

Fun stuff. I just got in the Sigma 70-300 and a 2x tele-extender (to test drive) and will use with a borrowed D5000 over the weekend. Curious to see how much better (if any) it performs than the Tamron. Got it so I could go out to the heron rookery and shoot some more bird shots like these. Nice shots, Paul.

[ilovelucydog]

Looks like you did have a good day. The birds are busy in the Seattle area. Even with the rain and clouds, the Pacific Northwest is one of the most beautiful places on earth. Thanks for sharing with us.

[Katy Noelle]

Paul! You have a gift for this, I think! These are really beautiful and the light doesn't look flat to me. Gorgeous compositions and bokeh and awfully clear! I don't know... it's kind of thrilling!

I'm wondering what focal length, too.

[Donald]

The first three are beautiful. After that I think the main subject starts to get a bit lost in the picture.

As I sit here typing I watch the blue tits coming and going from the boxes that we mounted on the wall of our house. They are very busily involved in nest building. Since I am not a very good gardener, my contribution is to rake out the moss that grows on the grass over the winter and leaving it lying around for the birds to help themselves for nest lining.

[jeeperman]

Thanks everyone. it was a fun way to break up the work day. As for the focal length....I was right in the 275=300 range. They were all between 15 and 30ft so I needed it due to their size.
Donald, I agree on the last two but included them more fore the story more than the shots themselves. Little guys are about 1/2 the size of a Hummingbird and nearly as fast. Just couldn't get closer.
Chris, I look forward to seeing how the performance is with the doubler. I have played with the idea as I am sure the quality would suffer less than having to crop 80% of the picture away.