Doo, Doo, Doo, Looking Out My Backdoor: Chickadees

I thought I would post pictures of some of the birds that visit our feeder. We have a bathroom on the second floor that overlooks the feeder in the back of the house. Occasionally, I will remove the lower sash and use the window as a "blind" to photograph the birds. They know I am there, but they are not spooked by my being there because I am inside the window much like birds are not afraid if you watch them from a car. Do birds get much cuter than this chickadee eating a sunflower seed?  Both chickadees and titmice will hold sunflower seeds with their feet so they can bang the seed open with their beak.

One of the benefits of shooting from the second floor window is being eye-to-eye with the birds that land on the tree branches above the feeder. It is a little easier to do in winter when there are no leaves on the trees blocking shots.  There is another advantage to shooting in the winter time - snow.  Our house is oriented in such a way that the deck (and feeder) are almost always in the shade. Snow acts like a giant softbox or diffuser, bouncing sunlight into the area and making it ideal for taking pictures of birds with strong demarcations of light and dark feathers such as the chickadees. You can see how the eye in this photo could easily disappear into the black cap of the bird.

Until very recently, I thought the chickadees around our house were Black-capped Chickadees (BCC). Come to find out, they are Carolina Chickadees. Who knew! The differences are so subtle that you have to look hard to know which one you are looking at.  BCC's have a lighter band along the top of their folded wing feathers, a ragged margin along the edge of the black under their chin, and they are slightly larger than Carolina Chickadees.

Another important consideration in taking a picture of a bird with a dark head like this is to try and get a glint in the eye to help distinguish it and give the bird some "life." The way it is holding it's head, you would think I had asked it to turn it's head a little.

Note: I have been waiting for Google to address the issues with IE 9 for a week, but it looks like they are not going to continue to support that browser, so I am switching my blog to Google Chrome.