Wednesday, October 24, 2018

The Blue Jays Many Splendid Eating Venues

I almost lost you all and would have had to start over although it might not have been a bad thing. Having to do some computer maintenance, I lost my Feedly ... um ... feed, which is how I follow blogs and some other newsy things.

I could get back in but how? There are three methods: email, FB and Google. So, I asked them to send me the password associated with my email. No response, so maybe I used another method. I logged in using FB, but my stuff wasn't there. Finally, I tried logging in with Google, and my contacts are back. But I really need to clean my Feedly list because there are so many dead links there, and to some degree, you can take that statement as literal. Sadly.

The experience was for the birds, so to speak, and speaking of birds ... let's get back to Heather's feeding stations, shall we?

I left you with the second station, which was the wagon wheels. You may recall that I didn't get any photos of the first station, which was just a post.

Well, the wagon was a little far to observe from the cottage, so Heather went on the attack and set this up across the driveway with a clear view from the cottage. I have posted this one previously, but am posting again for the sake of the chronology.



But my sister-in-law had just begun. This was the next setup. You can see in this shot and most of the rest that the days became much more overcast.



She also set this up at ground level. The other bird is a junco.



The next day's theme was quite intoxicating.



That was followed by the village.



But the village had to be modified because it wasn't completely structurally sound in the wind.



Finally, the birds had a tea partly and dressed for the occasion in their feathery finery.



All in all, what fun we had.

10 comments:

Marie Smith said...

Spectacular shots, AC! Love all of them.

Shammickite said...

There are some very well fed blue jays around there, they will miss you all now that you've gone home.

Vicki Lane said...

These are wonderful! What great photo ops!

Jenn Jilks said...

These are really fun! I'm glad you found your way back!!!

William Kendall said...

Those jays might just get spoiled! Fun shots.

Yesterday or the day before there was a spell of time in which my whole blogroll vanished for a half hour or so. It must have been a glitch.

PipeTobacco said...

Anvilcloud:

Your images as always are artistic and beautiful!!! Such a beautiful array of blue jay images.

Just because I am a novice student of photography, I hope you will not mind some additional questions.... it is a way for me to learn and perhaps grow in my own abilities:

1. Every image I have viewed on your site always has wonderfully appropriate lighting. My question to you is.... Do you simply use natural lighting in its natural form for your images? Or, do you manipulate available natural lighting with reflectors, or other tools to shape light the way you wish? Or, do you adjust for the natural variations in light through post-picture processing (like with Photoshop)?

2. In a similar vein, your color saturation is wonderfully rich and truly makes your images stand out to me. Is your work mostly just in finding the right natural condition where this saturation IS present? Or, do you adjust/modify your camera settings to enhance the saturation? Or might this be post-picture processing?

Please note though.... if the questions I ask are considered inappropriate.... I apologize and ask you to please ignore them. I only ask them in a way for me to learn.... because I am finding more and more for myself, that I need to foster my own (limited) artistic abilities... because when I immerse myself in trying to be artistic, I feel more whole as a person, and I feel less moody and out of sorts. It is a form of therapy I am finding valuable for myself.

PipeTobacco

Goldendaze-Ginnie said...

Two blue jays at a time are the most I've ever seen. What a treat to see so many, and in all the different settings. I'm sure my jays have never heard of a tea party, much less attended one !!!

Jenny Woolf said...

Oh now I really DO want to see bluejays like you have. (I am posting in reverse order) these are lovely birds. By the way I subscribed to your blog a while back and never get any updates, so I wonder if that's also something to do with the problems you have been having with the blog.

Ruth said...

What a whimsical post. I love the creative feeding stations and your photo captures are exceptional!

Debby said...

What fun you had with this, and what fun I've had looking at your pictures!