Bird stalking

 

The other day I had coffee at the Solano baking company. I brought a paperback book and tried to read it, but the birds were too distracting. Looking murderously around for the source of the noise I noticed high up a nest. The nest had maybe five little heads that popped up and five yellow beaks that opened impossibly wide each time the parent bird would show up I have no idea if it was the mother or father bird, as bird sex parts are not one of my things.

 

And of course not having my camera with me I could not capture the moment. So I drank my coffee and decided to return the next day, which I did.

It was loads of fun taking the hundred or so rapid photos of the birds. But also tireing. It’s easy to forget that it takes upper body strength to hold a camera with a long lens up at eye level. Strength I saddly seem not to have yet.

The hardest part was the fact that the bird doing the feeding was so very fast.
It was like a little bird version of a surgical strike.dart in drop food to one baby bird, then quickly fly away again. Lather, repeat.

 

I was happy with the dozen or so photos I captured of the action . I wanted parent bird and at lest one baby bird with beak wide open.
For bonus points I was hoping for a sense of motion.

Later after I felt I had gotten the goods, so to speak. I walked the length of the complex . noticing how many other nests were along the walls.

Many of the baby birds seemed to be at a completely different stage of development. Again not a bird expert.
From smaller baby’s whose head did not seem to make it over the side walls of the nests, to almost full sized teenager birds.

Even I could tell that the birds were teenagers, as one moved out of the nest and several of the other kept poking it’s sibling.

All in all a lot of fun.

(All of the images should be clickable)