daily slice-of-life photo blog of a Gen-X dad
Mariko and I were joined by a red-shouldered hawk for dinner tonight. The beautiful bird hung out on the tree in our backyard for about 15 minutes. It was so beautiful!
こんばんは。How’s it going?
Several months ago, Mariko bought me a bird feeder that uses suction cups to stick to our home office window. It took a month or so before the birds discovered it but they now come daily to grab a few sunflower seeds. What’s really nice is that I can go right up to the window, and the birds don’t even notice me, so I can get a close-up view of them.
I thought today’s visitor was a Bewick’s Wren, but upon closer inspection, I noticed it had a lot of orange, so I’m guessing it’s a Carolina Wren.
I hope you had a great day!
またね～
Today I made a bird feeder to attempt to attract some Orioles. It’s basically an 1-foot long piece of scrap wood, held vertically, with a dowel-sized rod stuck through it to make a perch. I drilled two long screws through the board so that orange pieces can be skewered onto it. I don’t know if we’ll see some Orioles, but I’m optimistic!
In the meantime, we have our Black-Crested Titmice and Carolina Chickadees to enjoy. I shot a bit of video today using an old 135 mm Minolta lens attached to the Fujifilm X-T10. I hope you like the video!
またね〜
Within a day of replacing our fancy green hummingbird feeder with an inexpensive red feeder, we finally got our first ever hummingbird visit! It was so exciting to see and add to my life-list of birds (#26). How exciting!
Today’s photo is of a bird (a female house sparrow perhaps?) that has been frequenting the north-facing window. We’re not sure why it likes to come by, but the cats are very interested!
Speaking of birds, I binge-watched all the episodes of Birds of North America. This series hosted by Jason Ward is excellent! Each episode is interesting and the topics are surprisingly varied. Definitely worth watching!
I hope you had a great day. またね～
Normally I try to take my work breaks away from the computer/office, but there was an birding webinar happening at noon, so I decided to just cut down my work to 10% and give 90% of my attention to the webinar. Just kidding. If it were only that easy! What actually happened is that I worked when the webinar wasn’t as interesting, and then switched over when it got better.
All-in-all, it was a nice birding webinar, with a several nuggets of good and interesting information. For instance, when using binoculars, first look at the bird and then without moving your gaze, bring the binoculars up to your eyes. The idea being that you are just putting the binoculars between your eyes and the bird, rather that looking into the binoculars. It’s a subtle difference, but very helpful! And that bit of info took all of 10 seconds of explanation. Amazing!
I hope you had a nice day. 😊
This summer, our backyard deck has become something of a zoo, with many different types of birds, pesky squirrels, and even lizards. Most times, it’s pretty quiet, but at about 6 pm, it becomes a madhouse! I really love to see the small birds hanging out with the larger ones. It’s so fun!
Recently a pair of white-winged doves has been coming by for water and a bit of food. I haven’t paid doves much attention since they are very common, but they are actually very interesting! Not only do they move more slowly and gracefully than the other birds, but they have really nice markings, especially when they spread their wings.
I hope you had a nice day!
