It’s officially time to close out the first Birds of Wisconsin series. Following previous series endings I thought I would throw up some miscellaneous birds captured over the course of our stay in the Dells area. I tend to highlight the unusual or more flamboyant birds on the blog, but I try not to discriminate against the more common aviary when out on a shoot. Hell, sometimes that is all that comes back in the tin based on what we were able to find out in the wild on any given day. There are definitely times when the more common bird shot ends up being my favorite of the shoot but I know my readers are not generally here to read about birds they can experience in the backyard any day of the week. Regardless, I still like to end with random shots that caught my attention in post processing.
For starters, here is …. a bird
It’s brown dominant with vertical striping with a white breast which basically translates to a near impossible bird to identify with any confidence. Primarily I liked the composition and of course the glint in the eye. I could take the normal stab and say it might be from a sparrow family say maybe a Song Sparrow but I usually rely on what I call the eye triangle to really classify a sparrow – it is hard to explain in text, but if you happen to see a picture of a sparrow, look at the side of the eye and you will see a about a 30 degree triangle (per eye side) that is pretty solid in coloring. This specimen does not really have that which pushed me to the finch options but this one was too large for that class. Next up was a juvenile Common Redpoll but they tend to have more stripping in the breast area. 20 minutes later of thumbing through the guides brought on the conclusion it was “a bird” Feel free to take a guess if you would like.
In stark contrast, the following bird is easily identifiable and one we are fortunate to have in abundance where we live. I have always liked the Cardinal but it does tend to bring a small feeling of remorse thanks to an errant shot with a BB gun when I was growing up. As you can tell that event has never faded but I’m ahead of the game having saved a number of them since then (example here).
Again, I really liked the composition of this one (and another successful glint capture), but the other aspect you cannot tell from this shot is how far away it was. We had just returned from to the car after walking a trail when I heard that all too familiar song. Eventually it was spotted sitting in mass of branches in a far away tree. I had the Beast out and somehow managed to keep it still enough to get a decent shot.
Hit the jump to see the rest of the set
