Life in our backyard

Black-capped ChickadeeMy favorite thing about spring is ramps--a kind of wild garlic spinachy thing that goes great in omlettes or just about anything, really. I also love to put the telephoto lens on and take pictures of any birds not scared away by seeing me outside for the first time in months!

This new bird gallery has shots taken during about an hour outside recently, watching the birds feed and the ramps grow, listening to the woodpeckers laugh and some other birds playing Marco! Polo!...

As I mentioned in the organic gardening blog, I'm always amazed at the garden life that survives the winter. Hell, I'm amazed that anything survives outside for a winter. But the garden is under a nice warm blanket of snow, but the birds that stay all winter just have to be tough! I know the chickadees can lower their body temperature when it gets really cold, but the other tough guys, like the woodpeckers, have to just rough it.

Maybe that's whey they're laughing at me! "Look at the wimp! Finally comes out when it's warm!" Guess they didn't see me out there BBQing when it was 0 degrees that one day.

Bird Wallpaper Backgrounds for Computer Screens for Free

A Red Bellied Woodpecker (which should be called an Orange Mohawked Woodpecker) that we call Ziggy.This new telephoto lens is aviarily awesome. I can stand at my window, hidden by the drapes in my little bird blind, and take great close-ups of the over 40 species of birds that visit the feeder on our back porch. While I've been able to enjoy close-up viewing with binoculars, it just doesn't compare to being able to sit down and study the detail of a close-up photograph of a bird, where you can see details like individual feathers. Or, in this case, a tongue!

This is a red bellied woodpecker, but as you can see, the coloring is orange, and there's a little splash of it on the belly, so hence the name. Many birds are named what they're not, and we've created little pet names for them ourselves. The purple finch is really burgundy, so we call them the red-wine-dipped finch. We call the red bellied woodpecker an orange Mohawked woodpecker. This is the female, who's mohawk doesn't cover her whole head like it does on the male. We call these guys Ziggies, after Ziggy Stardust, the David Bowie character.

This picture is cropped to better see the detail. The large version has space to the right and left, which makes it perfect for bird wallpaper (you can align your icons on either side of the bird). I've posted several bird wallpaper pictures to be used as bird backgrounds for computer screens, all taken with the new telephoto lens.

Remember, the versions of these high resolution nature photos are 1600 pixels wide. For the full, 3888 pixel wide versions, just contact me and we can work something out. I'm usually happy just to get credit and a link, per the creative commons license.