Sunday, February 07, 2010

Blue Jays Through the Window

Blue Jays are common enough in my area and their raucous calling can be heard frequently about the woodlands. Being quite the birdfeeder bullies most other species flee the feeders upon their arrival.

As boisterous and aggressive as they are they are also the species among the regular feeder visitors least tolerant of human presence. In my attempts to get close-up photographs of them this winter I have been thwarted by them at every turn.

With this weekend’s heavy snow covering their natural feed a few of the Jays seemed to be less cautious than normal and began visiting our deck feeder with me and my camera set up just inside our kitchen window. Most feeder visits consisted of the Jay landing directly in the feeder, grabbing a beak full of sunflower seeds and departing to an of sight perch with out giving me the opportunity to photograph it against an attractive background


Finally this bird landed where I was able to utilize the shadows cast by trees across the snowy hillside beyond to create a pleasing out of focus background.

8 comments:

John said...

Hi Coy,
We have the thing going on here with the bluejays. But we have noticed that they are not being as bullish as usual. the starlings and cardinals seem to do a bit of bullying back when necessary. I am going to create a new blog for our bird pictures so I can post them. Thank you for sharing the pics. Wonderful!

Elaine said...

Supurb!

Montanagirl said...

These are just so nice, Coy. The soft pastel blue background, with the gray and blue of the Jay. Very pleasing to the eye!

Kelly said...

...beautiful captures. They are always pretty birds, but add a bit of snow in and they are exquisite! Beautiful capture of Red too in the previous post. 20-24" of snow at one time--wow! We got 5-6 inches from the storm. Another is brewing and a possible 6 more tomorrow morning.

Peggy said...

Such a gorgeous background! Wow!

photowannabe said...

I love these noisy birds. We have a few around here that love to announce their arrival and chase the other birds away.
Terrific shots. Nice background for the little guys.

FAB said...

Nice portraits 'through the window' Coy.

EG CameraGirl said...

I have found blue jays elusive too. How clever of you to catch them through a window!