May 23 2010
For the Birds
Quite often I ride my bike through a small country community north of Boise called Hidden Springs. Each time I ride though the area I pass by some cattails that are about 5 feet off of the paved road. When I’m riding, the birds that are busy looking for food seem to ignore me and I can get rather close to them.
After my ride on Sunday afternoon I decided to take a bigger lens and camera back to that very spot with hopes of getting some very nice bird shots. After parking the car, I got out the camera, placed it on my monopod and approached the birds. Since I was not just driving by, all the birds became rather nervous and really didn’t want to hang around much.
Patience was the key to this photo outing and I was able to capture a couple of nice shots, one of a Red Wing Blackbird and the other… well, I’ll wait for my dad to comment as to the species.
Both photos were taken with the Canon 7D and Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS lens. The lens aperture was wide open at f2.8 giving a nicely blurred background.
Jim, your mystery bird is a female Red-winged Blackbird. When the sexes of a species of birds display different plummage patterns it’s known as dimorphism. In this case she looks more like a finch than a blackbird.