Just Sitting

Eastern Kingbird

Yesterday I revisited Tamarac Park in Lakeville and after walking around, I noticed in the dead tree, high up there were some birds.  Near the tree was a pension table, so I decided to sit down and see what birds were up in the tree.  There were Cedar Waxwings and after they left a tree swallow landed and started preening.  A truck pulled into the parking lot, and a nice gentleman came up and asked if he could get some advice on his photography.  Of course, I said I would be happy to.  So he went back to his truck and brought his camera and lens up and sat down next to me.  The hardest part was he had a Canon camera and lens.  Why this was hard is I do not know all the bells and whistles on using a Canon camera.  Talking about settings, that is easy because the settings for the exposure triangle are the same no matter what camera you are using.  He wanted to know a little bit about manual exposure, so we talked about how I do it.  He learned out how to set manual settings on his camera and then learned how to use the histogram to help them refine the picture.  As we were talking, I found out he is only shooting JPEG, but he wants to learn how to shoot in raw and then process the pictures in Lightroom.  Looking at his camera LCD screen, He had good looking pictures.  He is off to a trip to Canada next week, and when he returns.  We will plan to get together so he can learn how to use Lightroom.  Meanwhile, birds were flying by and in between talking, I was able to photograph the birds in flight.  I must say my Nikon D 500 and Nikon 200-500 lens grabbed focus quickly, enabling me to capture the shots.  All this occurred while sitting on a bench, enjoying good company and a beautiful sunny day with lots of activity and bird songs all around us.

Tree Swallow Preening

Brown-headed Cowbird

Great Blue Heron

When I reviewed my pictures on the computer, I got a surprise, the pictures showed many small insects flying around the birds that were perched at the very top of the tree.

Cedar Waxwing

Brown-headed Cowbird Parasitism

Yellow Warbler Nest

On Saturday, I was attending a reception at the Stone Barn, Allens Pond Audubon Sanctuary for the new Pres. of Massachusetts Audubon Henry Tepper.  While I was there, one of the staff and located a Yellow Warbler nest and I went to photograph the nest.  It was in a low shrub and had three yellow warbler eggs in the nest and one brown-headed cowbird egg.

From Wikipedia: "This bird is a brood parasite: it lays its eggs in the nests of other small passerines ,particularly those that build cup-like nests. The Brown-headed Cowbird eggs have been documented in nests of at least 220 host species, including hummingbirds and raptors.  The young cowbird is fed by the host parents at the expense of their own young. Brown-headed Cowbird females can lay 36 eggs in a season. More than 140 different species of birds are known to have raised young cowbirds."  Another interesting fact, is that it seems that Brown-headed cowbirds will periodically check on the eggs and young after the deposit them, and if the host species has gotten rid of the egg, the cowbird sometimes will attack the nest and destroy it, and when the host species bills another nest, the cowbird will lay eggs in the new nest.