Thursday, January 13, 2011

The Birds are Back

After a long hiatus, the waxwings came back with a vengeance!  The Mountain Ash outside my daughter's 3rd floor window has been decimated of berries.

The first few shots I took were with the 18-55mm lens.  Unfortunately, I forgot to check the ISO, which was still at 1600 from the last time I used the camera, so they turned our rather grainy.


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This photo shows just a few of the birds as they constantly fluttered around, in and out of the tree.

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In a nearby willow, more were waiting their turn.  Every now and then, the entire flock would suddenly leave, then zoom back in again.  At one point, while my daughter was watching through her window, one of the birds slammed right into the glass!  It seemed to be okay, though.


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After switching to the 75-300mm lens and fixing the ISO (I used different settings as I took the photos) I got a lot more photos.  A few of them have been uploaded to their own set in my flickr page.  There you can see photos from the last time this happened, a couple of years ago.

In just a few hours, the tree has been pretty much stripped of all its berries.  The first two photos above show the tree at about the half-way mark, so you can imagine just how full it had been!

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