Bird After Bird (Not Actually OT)

In back of the house I have a covered patio—it's a "pavilion," in this case meaning a freestanding roof with open sides. The builder was going to make an extra Summer bedroom out there, separate from the house, but after building a sturdy timber-frame structure he liked it so well as an outdoor space (they lived in the place initially) that he never enclosed it.

Lulu, me, and the covered patio or pavilion

Fortunately or unfortunately, the birds like to nest under its roof. At first I tried to shoo them away, but American robins (a different bird altogether than the English robin) are surprisingly bloody-minded about building their nests wherever they dang well want to build them. So I switched tactics, and decided to just enjoy the birds. So I now call the pavilion "The Aviary." I don't use it much, but it's being put to use.

I'm happy to report that Mother Robin's second clutch of eggs has recently hatched. After seeing three new birds into the world earlier in the Spring, she's now launching three more.

And—fun for me—I chanced to see the quintessential Robin tableaux the other day: baby bird craning its neck skyward, mouth open wide, waiting for food; mother bird perched on the side of the nest dangling a worm over the waiting beak of the youngster and then dropping it. And the little guy promptly gulping it down.

Fun. I'd never seen that before. Didn't get a picture of it, of course.

I've generally not been trying to get pictures, because basically you want to leave the birds alone and not stress them. But I did want to get a shot of the little ones this time. Here you can see two of the current three hatchlings. (The nest on the left was occupied last year but has been sitting vacant this year. Maybe it got foreclosed.)

Dad has come back around too, after the eggs hatched, to care for the babies; he's a scrappy, runty little guy, noticeably smaller than the female, so I can tell them apart. Sometimes he's there alone guarding the young.

Here's an odd thing. Until someone mentioned it the other day, I didn't even realize I could shoot my Fuji X-T1 on electronic shutter. I've even read a whole book about that camera! (There's one for the X-T2 now too.) I like Rico Pfirstinger's books, although my ignorance is possibly not the best advertisement for this book in this case. Ahem. Sorry about that, Rico.

Or maybe I just skipped that page.

It's not like I didn't know about electronic shutter. I've been very aware of it on various Panasonics, especially because of the "shutter shock" controversies with the GX8. It just hadn't occurred to me that the Fuji would have it too.

Oh well. Live and learn. Anyway I shot this silently, with the camera set to electronic shutter.

Mike

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Ken Ford: "Maybe take up falconry?  :-)  "

Stephen Scharf: "Loved the shots of the birds, Mike. I think you should photograph them more frequently. Personally I love seeing 'slice of life' photos like this (and pics of Butters, of course).

"Personally, I love photographing birds, but I find that I don't get much opportunity to do so. I did get really lucky once when I was on a business trip to the UK and there was a "raptor sanctuary" literally next door to my hotel (Gauntlet Birds of Prey, Knutsford, Chelsea, UK).

"They very kindly brought out some raptors for me to visit with and I felt very fortunate to get these photos (BTW, these were some of the very first photos I ever took with my just-purchased X100T):

"A beautiful female Red-Tailed Hawk that they had in for rehab from Califonia:

"By the way, if you look carefully, you can see how the brown leather lanyard on the hawk's right foot goes under the thumb of the falconer's glove, through the middle of his hand, and the end of the lanyard is ultimately wrapped around his little finger. The falconer mentioned this method of securing a raptor is the origin of the terms under my thumb and wrapped around my little finger."

Comments

[Herman]

Another Aviary-

[Bill Tyler]

These birds are the perfect excuse for you to test out whatever long glass Fuji has in its lineup.

[Darlene]

I recently attended a lecture by a professor from FSU's film school at the Florida Animation Festival. I was enjoying all the info the guy was telling us and then I heard it: the @#$%^&* sound of a camera's shutter. After the lecture, my friend who manages the theatre introduced me to an employee touting a A7*. I nicely instructed her that her high priced camera had an electronic shutter and it should be on during lectures. She said she worried since it was so quiet, it was not really taking pictures. I told her that was what her screen was for!

[Dan Doviddio]

Screened in porch would be nice. Unless mosquitoes aren't an issue.

[Rick in CO]

Know what you mean about those Robins. We had one that kept smashing into a small window of our bathroom. Thought he just wanted in until a friend pointed out that he probably saw his reflection in the glass and wanted to attack the intruder to his territory! Birds!

[Brian Taylor]

Good to hear your avian tenants (or are you theirs?) are doing well. Ref Fuji's electronic shutters, the one on the XT10 isn't silent. It makes a strange little sneezing noise. Perhaps the XT1 is a bit more classy.

[Thomas Paul McCann]

The robins here in Ireland can get very tame. We have residents and they seem to have got to know us quite well. Appear in the garden with a spade and they are straight out hopping around one's feet waiting for worms.. Whilst dining alfreso recently one hopped up to perch on my knee as much as to say 'Where are all the crumbs",

[Michael]

For info: the Gauntlet Birds of Prey centre is in Knutsford, *Cheshire*.

Loved the bird shots, in main article and comments. Thanks to all.

Michael

[Stephen Scharf]

@Michael: Yes, you are correct, Cheshire, not Chelsea.

Wonderful raptor centre.

Thanks for the correction! ;-)

[TBannor]

I find it interesting that early American settlers thought the American robin similar enough to the European robin to give it the name, but didn't notice its rather obvious similarity to the European blackbird, to which is is closely related. The red breast seems to have been give preference over form and habit.

[Tom Legrady]

I used the electronic shutter on my X-T1 to document during a video shoot, but discovered you have to be very stationary. Despite the fast shutter speed, there's a rolling shutter effect, so you have to be very intentional, you can't just 'snap'.