Mr. and Ms. Downy

DOWNY WOODPECKERS, GREEN, MICHIGAN, AUGUST 18, 2018

Pentax K-3
Pentax-F* 300mm f4.5 with Pentax 1.4x extender (420mm)
1/500 sec. f6.7
ISO 1600

I'd never before seen both female and male downy woodpeckers together in our back yard, let alone on a single suet feeder. Probably the little ones have left the nest so Mama and Daddy can go out on a Saturday night and have some fun. The camera was hand-held, lens wide open near dusk, and the image quality not bad for such conditions.

Downy woodpecker

DOWNY WOODPECKER, GREEN, MICHIGAN, AUGUST 16, 2018

Pentax K-3
Pentax-F* 300mm f4.5 plus Pentax 1.4x extender (420mm)
1/500 sec f6.7
ISO 1600

We have a pair of Downys in our backyard, and both of them love the basketwork suet feeder Debby made at the Porcupine Mountains Folk School in 2017. This is the male, as attested by the little red yarmulke on his head.

Ruby-throated hummingbird

Pentax K-3
Pentax-F* 300mm f4.5 plus Pentax 1.4x converter (420mm)
1/3200 sec. f8
ISO 1600

This season we have nearly a dozen hummers crowding the three feeders on the property, so it's easy to sit down in the living room and shoot the birds through its optically flat picture window. I was lucky to stop the wing as it reached the end of its reverse stroke. I also used the handy free Mac app called TouchRetouch to remove the red nectar feeder from the left side of the frame.

Red-breasted Nuthatch

RED-BREASTED NUTHATCH, GREEN, MICHIGAN, AUGUST 8, 2018

Pentax K-3
Pemtax-F* 300mm f4.5 with 1.4x Pentax converter (420mm)
1/320 sec. f6.7
ISO 1600

Capturing a good shot of these amusing little songbirds can be a challenge, because they are quick to grab a seed and fly off to a tree to consume it. We always have one or two of these around our feeders, and sometimes they gorge themselves on suet as well as sunflower seeds.

I was pleased with the lens combination, which gave sharp results even in dim light.

Male goldfinch

MALE GOLDFINCH, GREEN, MICHIGAN, JULY 29, 2018

Pentax K-3
Pentax-F* 300mm f4.5 with 1.4x Pentax extender (420mm)
1/320 sec. f8
ISO 400

The goldfinch community of the forest seems to have discovered our feeders once again. Its members flock to both tiny niger seeds and large sunflower seeds, filling our back yard with their song. They're an important reason we love to spend our summers on the shore of Lake Superior.

Female rose-breasted grosbeak

FEMALE ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK, GREEN, MICHIGAN, AUGUST 7, 2018

Pentax K-3
Pentax-F* 300mm f4.5 with 1.4x Pentax extender
1/800 sec. f7.1
ISO 1600

We arrived at our Lake Superior cabin late in the season, and only now are the less common species coming to our backyard feeders. This handsome female grosbeak chose to feed on the ground, on sunflower seeds falling from a feeder high atop a pole.

Scarlet Ibis II

SCARLET IBIS, CARTAGENA, COLOMBIA, MARCH 28, 2018

Pentax K-3
Pentax 18-135 at 135mm
1/800 f8
ISO 1600

A fairly prosaic photograph at the Aviario Nacional de Colombia had a busy, distracting background. A little work in Lightroom to darken and obscure the distraction transformed the photograph into a striking one. Journalistically this technique is a no-no, for it alters the reality a news photograph is intended to capture, but artistically it's quite permissible.

Indian Peacock

INDIAN PEACOCK, CARTAGENA, COLOMBIA, MARCH 28, 2018


Pentax K-3
Right: Pentax 55-300 at 300mm, 1/2000 sec. f8, ISO 1600
Below: Pentax 18-135 at 40mm, 1/500 sec. f8, ISO 1600

Native to South Asia (and the national bird of India), the Indian peafowl has been distributed around the world and has been found in the wild even in Canada.

This specimen at the Aviario Nacional de Colombia was utterly unafraid of humans and remained aloof even when Trooper, my service dog, expressed interest in sniffing him.