• Women skiers, this is the place for you -- an online community without the male-orientation you'll find in conventional ski magazines and internet ski forums. At TheSkiDiva.com, you can connect with other women to talk about skiing in a way that you can relate to, about things that you find of interest. Be sure to join our community to participate (women only, please!). Registration is fast and simple. Just be sure to add [email protected] to your address book so your registration activation emails won't be routed as spam. And please give careful consideration to your user name -- it will not be changed once your registration is confirmed.

Any birders? Share your photos!

Keepur

Certified Ski Diva
@altagirl @KathrynC Wow, it's amazing to hear the stories of how smart some birds are! I like birds too much and I think my boyfriend gets tired of me talking about even the most common backyard birds.

People say that Blue Jays are known for being mean, but yesterday an American Robin wouldn't stop attacking a squirrel. Last year I was saving one that was stuck in a neighbor's bird netting over his fish pond, and its mate wasn't too happy with me.

@KathrynC Wow! Crows are pretty smart so I bet it would be a pain but interesting to watch the jackdaws. My dad told me that he has seen crows dunking stale pizza crusts in his birdbath to make them easier to eat, haha.
 

altagirl

Moderator
Staff member
A few new photos:

A gorgeous Mountain Bluebird at Alta on Friday evening:

IMG_20180602_065600_062.jpg
And a Steller's Jay, also at Alta:
FB_IMG_1527907559886.jpg
An Arctic Tern up in Alaska, from my trip last week. I love how the feathers fold together like oragami.
FB_IMG_1527781865488.jpg
A Red-Necked Grebe, also in Alaska

IMG_20180531_114340_376.jpg
And one more Arctic Tern
IMG_20180531_095239_971.jpg
 

Keepur

Certified Ski Diva
Thanks for sharing! I haven't been birding in so long, so all these birds you have seen make me jealous! The most exciting thing I have seen this summer have been baby Robins, if that says anything. I'm hoping to get out birding during fall migrations...
 

Christy

Angel Diva
I did my first bird walk with Seattle Audubon. It was great--I will definitely do more of these. I'd never looked at birds through a scope before but we did and it was astounding (the Anna's hummingbird in particular was). I wondered how I would spot the group at the meeting point and had to laugh when I saw a group of 25 people all wearing binoculars standing in a parking lot. Yeah I guess birders are not hard to spot.
 

altagirl

Moderator
Staff member
I did my first bird walk with Seattle Audubon. It was great--I will definitely do more of these. I'd never looked at birds through a scope before but we did and it was astounding (the Anna's hummingbird in particular was). I wondered how I would spot the group at the meeting point and had to laugh when I saw a group of 25 people all wearing binoculars standing in a parking lot. Yeah I guess birders are not hard to spot.
Haha, I know what you mean. I did an Audubon walk in Anchorage when I was there visiting. I was worried about finding them, thinking it might just be a couple people, but there were like 50 of them.

Locally, most of the birders all have stickers on their cars too, so it's fairly obvious when you run into a kindred spirit. :smile:
 

Mary Tee

Angel Diva
And one other fun pic. An Eastern Bluebird wintering in Utah. It's quite possibly the same one who was here last year, maybe his navigation skills are a bit... unusual. He's been here for a few weeks.

View attachment 9844
Altagirl. these pictures are fantastic...have you published any of your photos? because they are certainly of a quality to be published.
 

altagirl

Moderator
Staff member
Altagirl. these pictures are fantastic...have you published any of your photos? because they are certainly of a quality to be published.
Aw, thanks! The tricky thing is that my camera has phenomenal 125x optical (24-3000mm) zoom, which helps get photos without disturbing the animals, but the sensor in the camera really isn't any better than a good cell phone camera. I'm no camera expert, but basically the detail isn't there when you blow up the photos significantly. Apparently an equivalent zoom lens for a DSLR camera, if it existed, would be something like 14" wide at the lens and couldn't possibly be hand held.

So my camera is great for social media type posts, but not the quality for actual publishing. But I really enjoy being able to catch what the wildlife around me is up to! It's fascinating and really helps me relax.
 

ornatewrasse

Diva in Training
I'm posting this bird image not because I think it's a great image, but because it was quite a first for me. At the time, I was preparing to get images of the total eclipse of the sun, which was visible close to where I live in Oregon. I purchased a Nikon Intervalometer to help me achieve this goal. I was testing the intervalometer. I set it to capture images every 10 seconds while the camera + lens were mounted on my tripod. I then left my house to go shopping. It was while I was away that this image was captured. I was pleased that I even got one image of a bird at my feeder!
 

Christy

Angel Diva
The first one in your first post! Wow!

We are having record cold and snow here and so I bought a hummingbird feeder to help the little Anna's Hummingbird that frequents our yard. It was so gratifying to see her find it right away!
 

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
26,235
Messages
497,601
Members
8,503
Latest member
MermaidKelly
Top