Stay at Home Day

No Lakeside Park for me today. With contractors coming in the early hours to replace a bathtub, I'd be house sitting for the best part of the day. A good opportunity to capture what wildlife my feeders are attracting in our garden. I set up a tripod with a good view through the patio doors. I also wanted to try out the second hand Soligor 350mm lens which I'd upgraded with a lens hood to hopefully reduce flare. I'll post the pictures as taken. First off is a house finch, which we have many being attracted to the sunflower seeds in the feeders:


We also have house sparrows, and you'd think they'd dominate, being larger, but not at all. They actually wait their turn after the house finches. Here's a male house sparrow, waiting:


Lots of chickadees, and I do love them as they are a close relative to the blue tits, great tits, coal tits and my favorite, the long-tailed tits from the UK. Here is a chickadee with the bath all to itself:


A few young grackles are also frequenting the feeders, more picking up scraps than actually taking from the feeders:


Squirrels do also attend, mainly for the leftovers on the deck, and also for a drink of water. They are unable to get to the feeders as I have the feeders suspended on thin wires which are just long enough that the squirrels cannot reach the sunflower seeds from the branches:


Cardinals, both male and female, dropped in every so often for a quick snack:


Here is a female house sparrow looking skyward for predators, and we did have a turkey vulture pass by:


This is definitely my best photo of the day and a bird I did not expect to come to our feeders. An adolescent male cowbird:


We do also have a chipmunk which skirts around the deck like a miniature vacuum cleaner:

  
I don't like including photos which show the feeders, but I had no choice as this was the only capture I had of a goldfinch:


So, all in all that was a good day, even though I was house-bound. The only bird I missed was a chipping sparrow. The 3D printed lens hood seems to have reduced quite a bit of the flare the lens was producing and the photos are acceptably sharp.

I'll leave with one more photo which is not particularly amazing or detailed, but I do like how animated it is:


Copyright © wildlakeside.blogpot.com 2019 Scott Atkinson All Rights Reserved.

Location: Kitchener, ON, Canada

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