For the last few days, it has been very quiet around the yard in terms of bird life. While last weekend the chickadees, nuthatches and flickers seemed to be around non-stop, the past few days, even on my walks, I haven’t heard a twitter.
With birds on my mind, I decided to play around with some of my photo art edits for my post this week. This is a topic that I have worked on previously; if you missed some of the posts from a couple of months ago, here are two links to take a look at:
A saddle billed stork resting along the shore of a small dam.A pair of Verreaux’s eagle owlsA helmeted guinea fowlA long-crested eagle perched at the top of a dead tree.One of my favourite birds to see on safari, a lilac breasted roller. Just a little brighter than you may see in real life 🙂
I always take a camera with me when I go out for walks with my dog (or on the rare occasion when I go for a walk on my own). I haven’t taken too many images in recent months, and as such hadn’t downloaded the card in quite some time. While out on Thursday, I saw a beautiful barred owl near my house, and while reviewing those pictures, I found a few others I had forgotten that I had taken.
This is a bit of a random assortment of images taken since July, while out and about on walks.
I see this young buck frequently around the neighbourhood now, but this was the first time that I had spotted him while out on a walk.A violet-green swallow seen while out on a walk on the dikes in Pitt Meadows.A proof shot that there are moose in the neighbourhood, even if they are seen very infrequently.A barred owl spotted on my morning walk last week.An early morning along the Pitt River.
I’ve been having fun this weekend working on some of my photo art images, but decided to share a few images of interesting weaver nests today. They caught my eye, and I decided to just go with it.
On my most recent trip, we saw communal nests of the red-billed buffalo weaver and the typical hanging basket style nest of southern masked weaver (that’s my best guess, as we didn’t actually see anyone in residence).
Loads of tiny basket style nests, abandoned for the season.These nests are built on the north and east branches of the tree; I believe in order to keep the nest cooler. Our guide told us that this was one way to determine direction if you are lost out on the bush.
On previous trips I saw several other great examples.
In Etosha National Park, the Sociable weaver nests had gotten so large, it brought down the branch of the tree.One of the many sociable weavers still in residence in the broken nest.In Amboseli National Park, another tree filled with the basket style nests of the weavers. I don’t recall which variety would have bee the architects here.A black headed weaver gathering supplies to work on a nest in Queen Elizabeth Park in Uganda.
I recently saw a beautiful abstract painting of an owl, and it inspired me to work on some of my owl images in a different way. All of these were created in Topaz Studio, using a variety of different filters and techniques. It’s been a lot of fun playing around with these this week.
You can find these images, and lots of others, over on my gallery page.
Here are a few images of red-billed quelea murmurations that I hadn’t finished editing when I was doing my month of posts on birds.
I was a little unsure of converting these all to black and white, because they had beautiful sunset colours; but stripping it back does change the focus and impression. What do you think?
Quelea stretching from tree to tree.Two flocks off in the distance.Watching a flock of a thousand or more quelea fly by while on a sundowner drinks stop.
As much as I had hoped that my photo art topic would allow me to get comfortable with Topaz Studio version 2, I haven’t actually even tried it yet. Fingers crossed that this week coming up I can make some time to a watch a tutorial or two and get familiar with the program operation, but for now, I have stuck with the original version, and I am really happy with the results of this weeks experiments.
I decided to focus on birds this week, and played around with two basic combinations of software. The sunbird and hornbill were edited primarily using the Topaz AI Remix module, while the rest were done with Impression (along with the usual basic edits to start for tone, cropping, etc.).
Do you have a favourite this week?
I hope you enjoy, and wishing you a great week ahead.
Travelling through southern Africa, pretty much any time of year, will provide the opportunity to see a great variety of birds. Today I chose to focus on ones with feathers in shades of blue. I hope you enjoy the variety of images today, and wishing you a wonderful weekend!
A lilac breasted rollerA burchell’s starlingA white-bellied sunbirdA pair of cape glossy starlingsA green wood-hoopoeA cape glossy starlingA wire-tailed swallowA double-collared sunbirdA lilac breasted roller
It seems a little bit strange creating a blog post that doesn’t actually show you what a red-billed quelea looks like up close. I don’t think on any of my trips to southern Africa I have managed to get that type of shot. What I wanted to share with you today was some shots of the stunning murmurations that the quelea display.
These little birds are the most abundant bird species on earth, and many farmers consider them a pest, given the way they can strip a cultivated field in the blink of an eye. I can understand the devastation that they cause when they end up in cultivated areas on mass, but watching them out in the bush against a colourful sunset is an absolute sight to behold (and definitely one worth putting down the sundowner glass of wine, and picking up the camera).
My only regret is I didn’t switch into video mode at any of these sightings; I’ll put that on my to-do list for the next time. 🙂
I hope you enjoy these images, and wishing you a fantastic week ahead.
Everyone that enjoys watching birds and photographing them knows that there are some species that are harder than others to get images of. I love the challenge of trying to capture that elusive clear image of a bird that tends to hide in the densest part of the treetops.
Locally, we have beautiful birds like the Western Tanager; a bird that I have only seen a handful of times, and photographed only on a rare occasion. The incredible yellow plumage on the males makes them targets for predatory birds, so sticking to dense areas makes a lot of sense. I admired the beautiful song of the Hermit Thrush for years before I finally saw a small brown and white bird singing, and had my first clue to discover the identity I had wondered about for so long.
While traveling, I kept up with trying to ID and photograph birds hiding in treetops and thickets. Some were deep amongst the leafy trees foraging for fruits, some were naturally shy and trying hard to stay out of sight, and sometimes, it was just unlucky positioning of the vehicle, and having to shoot through branches and grasses, before the bird flew away.
Here are a few of my shots of some of the more challenging birds spotted on my last trip.
I’ve had success with images of African Hoopoes in the past, but this trip, I seemed to spot them only when they were behind a bunch of branches, or as they were flying away.A Purple-crested Turaco. Such a stunning bird, which I was fortunate enough to see at two different camps, but only high in the treetops, feasting on tiny fruits. This was the best shot I managed over a couple of days trying!A green pigeon devouring figs. There were so many birds in this giant tree, and I had to stand underneath to take pictures. It was a dangerous place to be, and I nearly got pooped on more than once.Another glimpse of a Purple-crested Turaco.A green pigeon pausing from its afternoon meal.A white-crested helmet shrike. Sadly, I only saw this species once, and this is the best of the images I could get. At least you can make out the yellow, wattled eye ring.A chinspot batis that I spotted outside of my room at Chitwa Chitwa. I went out on the patio and was lucky to get this shot before the bird flew deeper into the trees.A black-backed puffback, also spotted from the deck at Chitwa Chitwa. The late morning and early afternoon hours between game drives are great times for bird watching from the comfort of your room 🙂My views of adult bateleur eagles are usually of them flying away, and not managing any shots. This is as good as it gets, so far. There’s always next time!A different hoopoe, in a different tree, but still obscured by branches.
