More beautiful yellow birds

Taking photos through the window doesn't always give the best reproduction, but I decided to post them anyway, 'cause these birds are so distinctive.

Their bright yellow feathers with the white swatches just make me smile. And when they landed in the tree next to my deck a couple of days ago, I felt as if I'd been given such a treat.

There were about 20 of them, hard to spot in the leaves so I consider myself pretty fortunate to have found a few to capture digitally.

These two males look quite content to just sit and wait. They had moved to this tree from a maple in front of the house that has a large feeder full of sunflower seeds next to it.

Their wings are so pretty - I was glad this fellow turned around for me to catch sight of the white on his wings.













And I learned one thing, not something new but one of the lessons I always need to be reminded of in this lifetime - patience. In my effort to keep them around for a while, I opened the deck door and tossed out some black oil sunflower seeds - not using my head and just enjoying them being around, I wanted them on my deck - closer! Well that was not going to happen - they took off in a huge flock calling to each other as they headed north to a neighbour's feeder - a neighbour who wasn't in quite such a hurry to see them up close! Well actually I think they were at work, but still, I could have waited. Patience is not my long suit.

Nor even my strong suit - all you card players know what I mean by that.

In any case I do have some photos and some lovely images in my head of this skittish group of beautiful birds. Hope you don't have that same tendency - the urge to hurry something along or force something to work, but can just wait and see what unfolds. I know it's more rewarding, I just can't seem to remember that sometimes.

And I hope that if you're patient today - something really amazing happens for you - like big yellow birds landing in your garden.

Feathered friends

I seldom get the chance to photograph a white-breasted nuthatch. They are busy birds and get out of my way very quickly if I show up with my camera. I don't often have time nor the inclination to hang about waiting for them to return.

Not this day though. I had my little point and shoot Nikon camera in my pocket when I was heading out for a walk with the dogs and noticed one of these clown-like birds on one of the feeders. Clown-like because they do such funny acrobatic tricks like walking head down a tree or wall, or hanging upside down to grab seeds. They also have a different sound to their chatter - my father used to say it sounded like yank yank to him.

This bird eyed me suspiciously as I hid behind a screen of weeping birch branches (those are the reddish vertical lines on the right of the photo). But my patience was rewarded and it continued to grab a seed and then returned once again. This time joined by a friend.

A spritely chickadee joins the nuthatch, but the nuthatch does not seem to be impressed. It leaves shortly and the chickadee and several others of its species cheerfully visit one at a time.

Another chickadee selects seeds from the other side of this jerry-rigged feeder. You can see how I've used wire to hold it together, not being a great wood-worker. But perhaps come spring I'll learn how to use glue and nails more effectively than I did last year with this one.

I do have to chuckle sometimes at what  some situations such as repairing small things demands of my ingenuity. Not particularly pretty, but so far in this case effective. Thank goodness nothing heavy such as a squirrel or raccoon has tried to grab seeds from this particular feeder. The dogs and cats have been great deterrents to these creatures so far.

And I've been able to enjoy the many birds that visit daily. The feathered flock that meets to eat at my diners,  is large and has a number of different species. With this mild weather I hope to obtain more pictures of more varieties as we get closer to spring. Bird watching is certainly fun. And challenging to my photographic skills.

Hope you get to enjoy something fun and maybe challenging today as well as I will.