all creatures great and small

A tranquil afternoon

I’ve been more or less house bound for about a week with an exceedingly painful case of shingles. (I’ve had to sleep on ice packs at night just to be able to eventually fall asleep). As I’ve had to remain shirtless nearly 24/7 to keep anything from touching the blisters, and leaning back on a chair or lying down were all equally painful, I had to find things to do standing up and shirtless.

So setting up my camera on a tripod in the kitchen and aiming at the bird feeders in my backyard was one good way to help me deal with the pain. Any time I came down to do the dishes, get something to eat, or prepare a meal, I’d slide the glass patio door back in case something interesting presented itself while I was doing kitchen duty.

It just so happened this particular lunchtime jaunt coincided with the arrival of a familiar pair of morning doves perched on one of my bird feeders. This double arched perch is a favorite or the sparrows as their favorite pair of bird feeders are suspended below them, and the whole thing sits right in front of the tree in my neighbor’s backyard that the army of sparrows roosts in at night.

The morning doves are too big to eat from the bird feeders, but all the smaller birds that do feed from them are such messy eaters that they cover the back shelf of my wood deck in bird seeds. The morning doves have grown fond of cleaning up the deck for me of all this excess spilled seed. But first they sit and wait patiently till they think it’s safe to come down (mostly from the many stray cats that love my backyard more than I do) and feed. So this perch has become a favored spot for the doves as well. The lighting was especially favorable to highlight the many lovely accent colors on their feathers that shimmer when the light hits them right, and as this particular time I had my old 300mm nikkor who’s color fidelity and depth 30 years later are still as good as any 300mm they’ve made since, I figured this as good a time as any to grab some nice shots of them.

There was a female sparrow sitting along with them in this simple tranquil scene, and just as I took this shot another female sparrow that you see in the background came flying in looking for a spot to land and enjoy a few quiet minutes at this favored backyard hang out, but she ended up finding a mess of aggravation instead.

Staten Islandmy backyardbirdssummernaturemorning dovessparrows