Birds!

I finally bit the bullet and bought myself a new camera. Although I went online and checked out the Panasonic with the 18X zoom that the Retired One uses, I simply could not afford to spend that much. So after some agonizing, I bought a Canon PowerShot SX 110 IS (with a 10X optical zoom). It is perfectly adequate for me. The picture above was taken from my front window (through the window) of a hummingbird backlit by the morning sun, using the zoom. (Click on any of the pictures to enlarge. Hey! I just noticed that you can see his tongue in the larger shot!) Those flowers are in a box secured to my front porch railing, purchased expressly to capture the interest of hummers. Directly above the flowers is a hummingbird feeder, but they do seem to love the flowers.
My upside-down feeder here has two goldfinches on it, the Washington state bird. On the top is the brilliantly colored male, with a black patch on his head, and below the more sedately colored female, with no black on her head. There are currently as many as four males on the feeders at one time, and they fight with each other (but not with the ladies). Pine siskins and goldfinches are the only ones that feed upside down like that through the tiny little holes in the feeder, so it keeps the other birds off. I have a sock and this vertical feeder that have thistle and tiny pieces of sunflower seeds in them (finch blend).

Here's the transparent platform feeder with a black-capped grosbeak (corrected by a friend; I thought this was a spotted towhee, which we also have around here). He looks more fierce than usual because of the sunflower seed in his mouth. I keep shelled sunflower chips in this feeder so the sparrows and other birds can eat there. The cover keeps the jays out, and my beautiful northern flicker has learned to use it anyway, with his long beak and agility. He has knocked it down, though, since he's so big (no pictures yet).

And last, my favorite guy, the chickadee, at my feeder filled with black oil sunflower seeds. At least I think this is a chickadee, but I could be wrong, because he's got more brown than he should, although I'm looking at him from a different angle than I usually do. They are so curious, and I was sitting in a chair on the front porch with my new camera eager to capture the birds on film and he flew up, grabbed a seed and posed for me. I swear he did.

So that's it for my first batch of bird pictures. I have plenty of the pine siskins, if anybody wants to see one of them, and I also have a couple pictures of the flicker with his head buried in the feeder, not great shots. I'm still working on getting him to pose for me, but he's a lot more shy than the chickadees.

Well, the sun has unexpectedly come out here in Bellingham. Yesterday was gorgeous, but then the rain showed up late last night and I thought it would hang around all day. It's clearing up, so I'm heading down to Snohomish to hopefully get my knees in the breeze at the Drop Zone! Have a great day!
:-)