Sunday, April 13, 2014

Female Junco on my Deck

I'm not an ornithologist, but I'm pretty sure this little bird is a female dark-eyed junco. I've been setting birdseed out on my deck, and it's given me a fairly close view of these birds through my patio door window. This particular bird looks like she is brooding off to the side. I've noticed, behaviorally, that sometimes one bird will 'sit watch' while the others are eating. (Watch for what you ask? Most likely, the nasty chipmunk, as I would observe later. You'll see him probably in the next few days or so.) When one of the birds 'sits watch', it is actually still enough for me to make three exposures on the auto-bracketing setting. Otherwise, while they are eating, the birds' heads are constantly whipping this way and that, up and down, all over the place. (The best hope for an HDR image there is to go pseudo and draw something out of one exposure.)

This particular image is three exposures: minus 3, 0, and plus 3. The image was shot handheld. Actually, it was shot off a rolled up a towel that I placed on the floor, with my camera on top of the towel, and the lens as close to the window as possible (in order to avoid a reflection). I was shooting with the Sony 55-210 mm lens fully extended, to get as close to the birds as possible. A little bit of wind made the tuft of feathers around the neck stand up, thankfully -- they stayed that way for the duration of the three exposures.


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