Private Blackbird

One of the smaller birds I photographed at the Venice Rookery Saturday was this red-winged blackbird. All three of these shots are of the same bird, but notice how the red part sort of comes and goes. I'm not sure how exactly that works. It doesn't seem to be just from the way he's standing. It seems like it may have something to do with the way he's moving some dark feathers on his wing to cover the red patch. The single gold stripe on either side seems to remain pretty visible all the time, though. This first shot is probably my favorite, but I had to overexpose the background to bring out the detials of the birds feathers. Exactly the opposite happens when I try to shoot white birds. If you ever see a photo of a black bird and a white bird together, it's either by a very good photographer or it's a fake.

I'm not sure if that's food he's holding in his beak here, or if it's just a stray bit of stuff he got stuck in his beak. I don't remember him eating.

These guys don't seem to mind posing for a while, but when they've had enough, they fly off and you don't see hide or hair, err, I mean feather, of them for a good long while.