It's Spring Time!

First of all, happy mother's day!

It's beginning to look like May around here. The trellis is out of storage, the hummingbird feeder is up, and the bird houses are ready for occupants. I have two of these bluebird houses up, one on each side of the trellis, in hopes that we'll get some this year. I have cleaned out the beef fat from the suet feeder for the woodpeckers, and replaced it with halved oranges instead as I hear that bluebirds and orioles like orange citrus.

My brother lives 10 minutes from us and he's already seen hummers and bluebirds but nothing here yet. Last year, the wrens built their nests in these houses. They build one they actually use and the other as a decoy nest.

You can see the lilacs in the background. They are starting to turn purple and will be in full bloom by Memorial Day.

Yesterday we had a downpour of rain and the shrubs and flowers will be happy for it.

Today's job is to move the snowblower from the garage to the shed since I think we've passed any chance of a late snowstorm!

Ruby-Throated Hummingbird (Male)

It is the throat coloring on the males which give this species its name. The feathers are iridescent and only show bright red when the light catches them a certain way. This pic shows the red...he is perched on a wire quite a ways away...it was kinda dark and the color showed up from the camera's bright flash.

Here he is hovering to get a drink from the feeder. I have it hanging from the iron trellis which is quickly becoming wrapped in morning glory vines.

It took a while to get pics of the males. For comparison, here's another pic of the female to go along with these.

Ruby-Throated Hummingbird (Female)

Hummers

Tony over at Evil Ganome inspired me to find these hummingbird photos after he posted a shot of a little friend he spotted in his garden. These pics were taken about 10 years ago when I was an apartment dweller in Irvine, CA and I used hanging baskets of flowers to brighten up my balcony. I put in fuschia and spider plants, and supplemented the color with the red sugar water in the hummingbird feeders.

I was amazed at the birds; how close they came to the window and how close I could get to them if I got to the window first and stood still. I meticulously cleaned the window of the sliding glass door, went out and bought a tripod, and cranked up the shutter speed on my Nikon EM to capture these shots.

I shot two rolls of 36 with four different lenses and these are the best. A couple years after this, I purchased a Nikon film scanner and scanned all of my negatives into TIFF files at 4000 dpi. I have a ton of B&W that I've shot from various cities — you may have seen some of them here on this blog from Washington D.C. and London.

Most of the photos on the blog are shot with my little Sony 3.2 Megapixel digital camera at 72 dpi. I'm considering a 10 Megapixel Nikon D80 digital SLR so I can use all of the lenses that I've invested in for the EM. I'm going to wait for Christmas to see if the prices drop.

In the first two photos, I love how the wings look in stop action. Don't miss the bird hiding up on top of the feeder. The hummer's pose in the last photo reminds me of an Olympic male gymnast doing an iron cross on the rings.



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