Richard’s Notes

Looks to me like a male pigeon is preening and necking with a female. This was inside the gated grounds of City Hall in New York City.

Read Full Post »

New York City. We were waiting for a friend in Little Italy and we found a small corner park to sit down in. Our bench afforded views of kids playing in a fountain, people playing chess, reading, talking, and napping. While all of this human activity was going on numerous pigeons were doing their food [...]

Read Full Post »

Washington, Connecticut. A friend and I set up shop on a boardwalk running through a meadow in the Macricostas Preserve of the Steep Rock Land Trust. The meadow has a dozen bird houses on poles for the tree swallows living there and one of them was within focal reach of our long lenses.
Male on the [...]

Read Full Post »

Washington, Connecticut. A friend and I set up shop on a boardwalk running through a meadow in the Macricostas Preserve of the Steep Rock Land Trust. The meadow has a dozen bird houses on poles for the tree swallows living there and one of them was within focal reach of our long lenses.
Here are two [...]

Read Full Post »

Warren, Connecticut. My friend Ted found an abandoned house (actually an old camp) way up a dead-end dirt road in an obscure corner of my town. He likes shooting falling down barns and old houses and I’ve never done it before so I tagged along to learn from the pro.
I got a few good shots [...]

Read Full Post »

Washington, Connecticut. A friend and I set up shop on a boardwalk running through a meadow in the Macricostas Preserve of the Steep Rock Land Trust. The meadow has a dozen bird houses on poles for the tree swallows living there and one of them was within focal reach of our long lenses. I felt [...]

Read Full Post »

A pair of turkeys started grazing on bird seed under our bird feeders and all of the cowbirds scattered to the trees. This one was right next to my office window so I was able to shoot him at relatively close range through the glass. He’s patiently waiting for the turkeys to clear out so [...]

Read Full Post »

Seems like all the rose breasted grosbeaks on flickr communicate with one another as they all came back at the same time. I saw a wonderful shot of one the other day and longed for ours to return and while I was washing the breakfast dishes one appeared. (I’m now wishing for a 5D to [...]

Read Full Post »

Of all the birds that visit our feeders the blue jays are the most fun to watch. It’s easy to project human characters on top of them: this one I imagine as Curly in The Three Stooges, getting pushed around by two other jays that are smaller than him. He did manage to find a [...]

Read Full Post »

Cowbirds, while relatively plain looking have wonderful personalities and aren’t spooked by photographers so one can get in close to watch their antics, like this one tossing a seed into the back of his throat to chug it.

Read Full Post »

Each year I mark on my iCal calendar when the ducks come to our little pond. They come first to the big lake down the road and then work their way up into the smaller ponds to, uh, “do it” in more private settings. This year it’s over a week later than when they came [...]

Read Full Post »

I needed to get out so I slung my tripod over my shoulder and took a few lenses and walked down to the lake and part way around it.
Between the recent thaw and rain the ice on the lake is breaking up a bit. Where these geese and ducks are hanging out is a shallow [...]

Read Full Post »

I was just about to leave the house and heard a very loud woodpecker working on the choke cherry next to our bedroom window. I looked out and it was a huge piliated woodpecker. We see them occasionally here but I’ve never photographed one. I ran and got the camera set up praying he’d still [...]

Read Full Post »

A “gang” of finches know where the action is at an outside lunch place in Santa Monica. This dude tried to intimidate me into giving up my lunch.
He tried to look cute, hoping for food.
I tossed him a piece of my tortilla “wrap” and he squawked. Can’t tell if he was approving or calling me [...]

Read Full Post »

I took a lot of pictures of roosters at the Goshen fair but these two somehow caught my eye. The way the roosters displayed and strutted around gives you a very multi-sensory experience of the differences between males and females. Gad, to think, I’m a rooster. Oh boy, have I got work to do.
Neither of [...]

Read Full Post »

eclectic echoes (Eric Heupel) in Mystic, Connecticut caught an egret head on. For the life of me I saw this as a plant and not a bird for a few minutes. It’s a terrific photograph.

Read Full Post »

While cruising an East Village neighborhood near a restaurant I was meeting some people at I came across a small, very old cemetery in the middle of a city block. A very nice looking dog was intently looking through the iron fence at…
…a pigeon sitting on top of a tombstone. The pigeon wasn’t too worried [...]

Read Full Post »

We have a lot of grackles and I tend not to like them because they can empty the feeder faster than a bluejay. However, this dude was handsome and posing and I was trying out a new head for the tripod so figured I’d try it out on him.

Read Full Post »

This is the same young blue jay that’s been on the feeder for months, among dozens of other blue jays that come. I know him because his tail’s got a problem in some of the center feathers. I’m pretty sure he’s young but my theorizing may be way off.
I noticed here that his feet are [...]

Read Full Post »

This jay was making a racked outside my window here so I put the extender and long lens on and took some pictures. I’m between tripods right now so this was handheld but thank got the 20D has low noise at higher ISO settings; that made this possible handheld.
I’m not sure what’s going on with [...]

Read Full Post »