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<\/p>\nOne cooperative bird in six hours and 220 miles. I won’t be doing that again anytime soon.<\/p>\n
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1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 1000, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n My very long trip to the west desert yesterday morning was largely unproductive, with the exception of this surprisingly cooperative Dark-eyed Junco. “He” spent about 10 seconds on this relatively isolated perch which allowed me to get quite a few shots of him. He didn’t give me many poses but considering how the rest of my morning went, I’ll take what he gave me without complaining. Much.<\/p>\n I find that out of focus, vertical twig directly in front of the bird to be distracting so…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I played around with getting rid of it. I like this version better but it isn’t exactly what my camera saw, or what I call “real”.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 1000, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n This is the only other pose he gave me. I actually prefer it over the first pose, which seems a little too stiff and formal to me. With the bird facing away from the out of focus twig, I don’t find it to be nearly as distracting.<\/p>\n What I really wanted was takeoff and\/or flight shots but…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 1000, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n the darn bird had other plans and took off away from me.<\/p>\n Dark-eyed Juncos are one of the most common and familiar passerines in North America, which probably explains why many photographers tend to ignore them. This is what Cornell’s Birds of the World has to say about their familiarity:<\/p>\n The Dark-eyed Junco “is familiar because of its ubiquity, abundance, tameness, and conspicuous ground-foraging winter flocks, which are often found in suburbs (especially at feeders), at edges of parks and similar landscaped areas, around farms, and along rural roadsides and stream edges. Audubon (John James, in 1831) stated that \u201cthere is not an individual in the Union who does not know the little Snow-bird,\u201d… and to some people \u201csnowbird\u201d is the junco’s name today.\u00a0 A recent estimate set the junco’s total population at approximately 630 million.”<\/em><\/p>\n 630 million is a lot of birds but in my view “familiarity” is no reason to ignore them, even if they insist on taking off away from me.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n PS – It wasn’t like I wasn’t tantalized and teased by other birds yesterday.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I counted at least 15 Bald Eagles in a grove of trees but they were all strongly side-lit, partially blocked by branches and twigs, they weren’t very close and none of them were flying. All I could do was drool over them, so drool I did.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One cooperative bird in six hours and 220 miles. (4 photos)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/dark-eyed-junco-doctored-8308-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"dark-eyed-junco-doctored-8308-ron-dudley\\"")
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