Shootin’ Birds

We hear birds day and night in the woods beyond our deck and when there are leaves on the trees it’s often very hard to spot’m.  The crazy thing is that they conspire to make it even more difficult when I want to photograph one.  They’ll all start chattering together to throw me off just when I’ve found a bearing on one of them.  It’s not singing anymore at this point; it’s pure goading.  They let me hear but not see.  Or they’ll execute a fly by.  They love doing that. One will land on a branch, plain as day, then zoom out of sight as soon as I spot him.  The whole experience makes me more determined.

Fortunately, I do get lucky sometimes.  What has surprised me the most in the short time that I’ve been photographing birds, on a very casual basis, is how many different species frequent our very own backyard.  I never realized the variety until I started identifying them from my photos.  For example, I had no idea we had anything like this species of bird in our neighborhood before I captured this image.  I had never seen or heard of a Summer Tanager.  It actually took me over an hour on the internet to identify him.  Looking at every species of bird, some of them twice, before you find the right one takes time.  But when you finally do, it’s like striking gold!

This guy was more difficult than most because he’s a juvenile.  Most general identification thumbnails are of the adults.  The adult male is entirely red and the adult female is yellowish green with darker wings.  As you can see, he’s two toned, red and olive.