Junco

I must say I am loving this new camera of mine! As I’d previously mentioned, I recently purchased a Nikon D3400. And I love the thing!

As I sat having lunch early yesterday afternoon, I spotted three birds alighting upon our now-bare lilac bush out back. They were so cute!

I grabbed my camera.

I began taking shots of them through the patio door’s glass, not wanting to disturb them by opening the door, but I eventually did (my wife decided we should do it). You see if you can tell the difference in the images captured below. Anyway, I just began ripping off some shots, and it was so funny, but one of the birds just sat there, striking pose after pose just for me! Looking right at me. It was a beautiful thing!

I couldn’t figure out what kind of bird it was (I flipped through my bird field book—yes I have one for birds as a well as for trees—and searched online), so I posted it on Facebook, and a friend-of-a-friend identified them (well, her husband did, she just passed it along) as Dark-eyed, Gray-headed Junco. They are such beautiful birds! I used the automatic mode of the D3400, but it was f/6.3, 165mm, ISO 200, 1/1250th of a sec. 3000 x 2847…but I compressed all the images.

Click on the images to enlarge.