Fantastical Friday! #25

Posted on October 22, 2021 by

289 Comments

Good morning everyone and Happy Friday! It’s a cloudy, cool morning here and it’s going to stay cloudy today, with possible flurries. It’s that time of year. It’s a busy morning at the feeders again. Theodore just arrived and has claimed the main feeder for a while. I will have to replenish the supply of seeds when she leaves. There was a lot of birds here a little while ago, then suddenly the blue jays let out an alarm and what a noisy alarm it was too. All the other birds disappeared, the female blue jays went into hiding and all the male blue jays attacked the intruder.

Evening grosbeaks.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to see who the intruder was, but it was a bird the blue jays didn’t like. That would mean a small hawk, like the sharp-shinned hawk, though they should have all migrated south by now. Or it could have been a northern shrike, but that would be very early for them to show up from the far north. I have never seen one before the end of November before. They usually follow our other northern visitors down, like the pine grosbeaks and redpolls. And normally it’s December before they arrive here. So whether a hawk or a shrike, it’s a bit unusual.

Too bad I missed seeing that one. I watched as all the male blue jays came flying back. There were 12 of them, which means there are 10 females. The evening grosbeaks have finally returned now as well, that’s quite a bit after the blue jays. But Theodore is still on the feeder, so the grosbeaks will have to wait a bit for their breakfast. Remember I wrote about that baby deer that was hit by the car? It was out here with it’s mother this morning walking around and munching on leaves, showing no signs of injury. That happened 12 days ago, so it was nice to see the little deer in good health still. Hmm, Theodore has gone now and the feeder is full, totally full of evening grosbeaks.

There is also 4 purple finches, 3 are males like this one.

I better go give them more seeds. Yep, they needed seeds alright, Theodore had eaten almost everything that was there, except for the seeds right underneath her. That always happens. Well, there is at least 30 of the evening grosbeaks now and I think there are actually more. There were some up in that one tree out back that still has some leaves, making it hard to see the grosbeaks sitting on it’s branches. They are such a nice, colorful bird to have around. And their lively chirping is a joy to hear, even though they do tend to argue a lot. Perhaps I can get some new pictures of them today. I hope all of you have a fantastical Friday, and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

©2021 Steve McLeod.

Category: Autumn, Beauty, Birds, Country Pleasures, Fall, Fun, Happiness, Photos, Positive, UncategorizedTags: , , , , , , , , ,

289 Comments on “Fantastical Friday! #25”

  1. could you, please, remind me what camera you use and the lens you use? you know, the techie stuff. lol why you chose the camera etc. if you use an editing program, etc. thanks

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    • You might be disappointed, I use a basic, point and shoot type camera. It’s a Canon Powershot SX540HS fixed lens, so you can’t change lenses. It has a built in telephoto lens capability, supposedly 50x closer, not quite true. It is 50x closer than it’s widest wide angle capability, but that’s a bit deceptive. However, it is decent for most things. When I’m at the river I can take pics of ducks on the other side of the river, but the quality isn’t as good. It is a great camera though, lightweight and smaller than a DSLR which makes it very nice to carry when out walking. Plus no extra lenses to carry along. I really like the camera, it can be used with or without the auto function. Plus I can take multiple photos by holding down the shutter button. About the only think I use my photo program for is shrinking the size of my photos for posting on here. Pics are generally 5 to 10mb in size. I would use up my limit on here very fast that way. So I shrink them to 100 to 150kb. That doesn’t hurt the pics any but sure saves space! The odd time I will crop a picture but normally do it to remove something I don’t want in the photo. I don’t do touch ups to my photos, photos are what they are. So, not really techie. I tried a DSLR, I thought it might be nice, but it was just too big, heavy and slow for what I wanted. Hope that helps.

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      • thanks. nothing wrong with a good point and shoot and i feel canon makes some of the best. i have used several canon point and shoot cameras. if your 50x tele a true zoom or is it all digital? if all digital you will loose picture quality. but a true zoom will preserve the quality better. of course it all depends on the megapixel your camera is. so, no i am not disappointed. and yes, it is a good idea to make your pics smaller to save space here on wp. i found out that you can set the media file to resize the pics from the original to a size you prefer no matter what the original size is. yes a dslr is big nd heavy but some of the newer mirrorless cameras are helping decrease that weight. no matter what, keep clicking. 🙂

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      • I will admit to not knowing the difference between a true zoom or one that is all digital. But it’s just a hobby for me. If I could get out more I would invest in a better DSLR. But my health doesn’t allow me to get out much anymore. The worst thing about this camera is the guy behind it!😂 Thanks so much Buddy!

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      • I read up on your camera and has a very good optical zoom and then has a power zoom feature which makes it a digital zoom. So if you zoom to the max of your optical zoom and then go past that you’re using up your megapixels from your sensor because it’s a digital zoom from there on out. But if you stay within the realm of the optical zoom you have a very good optical zoom capabilities with that camera according to the printout that I read. So you did a very good choice for a camera and I’m sure you’re very happy with it and you do take very good photos with it.

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      • Okay, I get it now. Yes, beyond that the quality is considerably less so I don’t bother with it. But I am really happy with the camera. Not all my pics turn out good, but that’s my fault, not the camera! Thank you very much!

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      • I delete a lot too. A photographer once told me, “you must be a bad photographer if you have to delete photos”. He wasn’t a professional, but his pics are definitely better than mine. Still, I have been able to sell quite a few.

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      • You’re not a bad photographer to be able to delete because sometimes the camera just does not capture what you are really looking at. Sometimes you don’t have the right settings on the camera. It’s really about the light in the light changes very quickly and if you don’t start clicking away as soon as possible you may lose the shot entirely. Yes I edit my photos because the camera does not always capture what I see in my mind of the scene and I want people to see what I saw. And sometimes when I click that button and I look at it later it’s not exactly what I want. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Many professional photographers have shots they don’t use and that’s why they click away so many of them because they’ll get the one that they want. So don’t be afraid to delete because if you don’t delete then you haven’t been trying.

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      • Thanks for that Buddy! I know what you mean about light changes, and it can change suddenly which makes the whole picture different than what I was trying to capture at the start. Like when a cloud suddenly blocks the sun just as I click! Things like that have happened quite often. Or a bird suddenly turns it’s head, or it hops to the side and the picture turns out great, except the bird is now missing it’s beak! I have a terrible time with sunsets, it never turns out like what I actually see, which can be a bit frustrating. So yeah, a lot of photos end up being deleted. Have a great weekend!

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    • It definitely gets crowded at times and there’s always a few arguments, but only when they start running out of seeds. I’m still amazed that little deer survived, but so glad he did.😁😺☕☕

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  4. Happy to see the young deer is okay ! Love those blue jays ! They “ police “ very well indeed ! Have a better night Steve and Muffin ! 😴😻

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