What a difference the light makes

[PopsPhotos]

Rain stopped about 04:30 this morning, clouds cleared about 11:00 and the birds showed up shortly after that.

[ScoutR]

Rain stopped about 04:30 this morning, clouds cleared about 11:00 and the birds showed up shortly after that.

You don't have snow out there? Not much here either, but the ground is covered. I still say Donald is is keeping all the snow in Scotland this year.

The birds look excellent. Light is everything. I think that Dave did a good job of salvaging the last one though. I'd consider it a keeper after the work he did on it.

I just started feeding the birds. So far just squirrels, but they always seem to show up first to test the waters. I don't know if I'll get any shots. I used to spend a lot of time years ago trying to photograph birds. I spent hours in a homemade blind in the backyard and all I ever got worth keeping was 1 bluejay.

Nice work on these. They are all keepers and if they were mine I would not do anything else to them. (Well, I'd probably crop, but I crop everything )

Wendy

[PopsPhotos]

We had snow, but that warm rain came through and melted it all. The white background on the one you were practicing on was our snow. We'll get some more. It gets interesting here, because we have a cycle of a couple of weeks on our snows. It snows and sticks around for a week or so and then we get a warm rain (32 -35F) and melts it all off. Of course the ground is frozen a foot to 18 inches deep, so the water just lays there, thawing in the day time and refreezing at night. Great fun.

We have the feeders up for quite a few years, now. The birds took a couple of years to really use them, but we are now flocked by the birds. The Gold Finches are the most common ones, with the Red Winged Blackbirds coming through each Winter and Spring. The RWBBs bring a few hawks with them, also.

Pops

[PopsPhotos]

I just started feeding the birds. So far just squirrels, but they always seem to show up first to test the waters. I don't know if I'll get any shots.

I[m thinking of setting up the camera inside the screened porch, with a hole cut for the lens. Then I'll put a mirror leaned against the fence. That way I can aim my IR remote at the mirror and trigger the camera. Might work.

Pops

[ScoutR]

Way too high tech for me, but I'm with you on the hole in the screen. Looking forward to seeing the results. I like bird pics.

Wendy

[Donald]

I still say Donald is is keeping all the snow in Scotland this year.

Yep, looks like it! We haven't had snow stick around for so long for many, many years. And we're getting close to record low temperatures. But it seems to be happening all over northern Europe.

Lovely set Pops. I'm not at all set up for getting this quality of image of all the birds that we have coming into the feeders. They're certainly desperate, at the moment, for whatever we humans can provide.

[PopsPhotos]

I'm not at all set up for getting this quality of image of all the birds that we have coming into the feeders.

I just stepped out side the screened porch and stood on the steps with my D40 55-200 set to 200 and P. After a few minutes, they were back. Notice that I didn't post all 43 pictures I took that session.

Pops