Red-Shoulder

I may as well throw in a red-winged blackbird for you while I'm posting bird pictures. Nice light on this one, you can see the black feathers quite nicely. Sometimes they just show up as black blobs with a red and gold spot, but this one came out nice. Again, from the Circle B Bar Preserve in Lakeland.

A Black Bird (W/ Red)

This was the second red-winged blackbird I'd shot in as many days. This is another of the birds I spotted on Cockroach Bay Road this past Sunday. I guess if you stand in any one place long enough, you're bound to see something. Actually, I wasn't there that long, it just turned out to be a really good spot.

I didn't notice it on the bird from Saturday, but this guy had distinct brown marks on his back. I don't think those are an artifact from the lighting, but maybe. He certainly had some nice, bright colors on his shoulders, and it was always visible, at least as long as I was watching.

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.

A Flash Of Red

I found the picture above in amongst all of the stuff I shot during my last trip to Ohio in June. I remember chasing this red-winged blackbird up and down the side of a canal near downtown Cleveland, but I didn't think I'd gotten any decent pictures. I must have missed this one when I was reviewing my shots for the day. As you can see, he's got his lunch, or at least a juicy appetizer, held firmly in his beak as he flies back to the nest.

One Piece Of Flair

I meant to post this last weekend, but I forgot amid all the hullabaloo of the eagles and the osprey. I spotted this red-winged blackbird on the little island at the Venice Rookery. I see them there all the time, but never out in the open, and never showing off their red-capped wings. In a couple of weeks I'll get my longer lens, and I hope to get more shots of smaller birds like this. Wish me luck!