On the morning of Friday, March 07, 2014, we finally got a little break in the weather that had been plaguing us for the past week or so.  My wife had plans to be away from the house and so I decided I was going to bird… and for me at this stage of my life, birding equates to photographing birds.  My original thought was to take to the car to see what I could find, but the previous day our first Rufous hummingbird (a male) had shown up and I thought there was a good chance that either it, or another would visit the yard and so I decided to first try my luck in the yard.  It was a fortuitous decision! 

In the course of a little less than three hours (9:50am – ~ 1:00pm) I had a rich assortment of avian visitors.  None of the visitors were unusual, but they provided some unusual photo opportunities.  I ended up taking 209 photos, saved 103 after processing and obtained some excellent photos of some birds which I usually have a very difficult time photographing.  Not only that, but I was able to photograph some birds at just beyond the minimum distance at which my Nikkor 200-400mm lens will focus… about 16 feet. 

The weather cooperated… the temperature was above 50-degrees and the sky was partly (but mostly) cloudy.  At those few times the sun actually shown it was more a detriment than an asset.  For the past couple of weeks I’ve set the ISO on my camera to 320 to take advantage of the extra exposure it gives me in the darker light.  In theory this probably gives me a little less sharpness in my photos but it allows me to photograph in darker areas at a slightly faster shutter speed.  I believe that all my photos taken this day were taken at 1/250 of a second and I used a monopod to steady my camera (Nikon D-7100) and lens. 

So here’s the list of what I saw in the yard today.  An ‘*’ designates that I obtained photos of the bird(s), but not all the photographed birds are included in this post.  . 

 * Varied thrush (2M)

* Spotted towhee (2M)

* House sparrow (M&F)

* Golden-crowned sparrow

* Fox sparrow (2)

* Song sparrow

* Northern flicker (M+1)

* Brown creeper – the find of the day and a couple of excellent photographs!

* Bewick’s wren

* Anna’s hummingbird (M) – bathing in watercourse

* Dark-eyed junco – Oregon race

* Dark-eyed junco – Slate-colored race

* Black-capped chickadee

American robin

Red-breasted nuthatch

Chestnut-backed chickadee

The result of this is that I was probably burdened with just about as much processing time as the three hours it took me to acquire the images.  I shouldn’t complain and this   provides me with a really good blog post. 

This signals a period of transition for my photography.  In the winter I usually find it more comfortable and productive to drive through the county looking for the birds of winter (mostly waterfowl, shorebirds and raptors).  In the spring and summer I have much better photographic opportunities in my own yard with landscaping designed to attract and photograph birds.  So in the coming months you will start seeing many more photographs that will have been taken in our own yard.