Day 286 - Flocks of Birds

I started my day with the song of an Oriole - it was most probably a Baltimore Oriole, but I could be wrong and it could be the Brown Creeper I saw a couple of days ago.

I spent most of the morning running between my bedroom and balcony and being on the balcony trying to get as many bird shots as I could.  The weather was unpredictably crazy - what started off as sunny and gorgeous, turned grey and snowy within minutes, and for a few minutes we had near white-out conditions. That cleared to give way to sunshine and then some more cloudiness.  As soon as the sun came out, the birds did too.  At one point, the little park at the back was full of woodpeckers, nuthatches, brown creepers, starlings and sparrows.

I also stood and watched a squirrel running around hoarding food and eating part of it.  That was really cute!

This one is a Male Hairy Woodpecker.  The difference between this one and the Male Downy Woodpecker is that the Hairy Woodpecker's bill is longer than the size of its head, whereas the Male Downy's bill is about the same length as its head.  The females of either species don't have the red patch on the crown.

This one is a Male Downy Woodpecker.  Notice the length of the bill is shorter than that of the Hairy guy!

White-Breasted Nuthatch.  I love these guys - they look really cute!

And since I had proclaimed this week's theme to be snow, here then is a shot with snow in it!

Day 158 - On the phone

No.. I don't mean I'm on the phone.  Today's shots were taken on my phone camera.

One wet day, today!  I saw a little bit of blue sky and was really excited hoping it would stay that way.  But the weather has a mind of its own - it decided to throw down buckets of rain instead.  I saw such pretty colours on my way home that I had to stop and admire the scene, sans camera.  And then I thought - wait!  What did I pay the big bucks for my phone for?  It has an 8 MP camera on it and so I whip it out to get some nice shots.  Of course the megapixels don't really have anything to do with the quality of the lens, but you do expect a moderately good piece of glass in a hi-res camera.  Well, at least I did!

I have used it before on a nice, bright day, but this evening was a completely different story.  I couldn't believe the grainy shots I got, no clarity or sharpness - nothing.  I am certain there are settings on the camera that I could have manipulated, but I have never really taken the time to get familiar with this one.  I made a mental note of that - make friends with your phone camera!

What a bummer it was!  Anyway, out of the 15 odd shots I took, I discarded most of them.  The following remain:

To add a final note. the first three shots were processed in LR3 and the last one is SOOC.  I think the difference in quality between them is noteworthy.