Birding- wild ones that is

[CheekyChicky44]

I was just wondering if anybody else wants to share pictures and advice on birding. I have a few feeders and can get some good sightings on occasion.

 

[philter4]

I have no advice on birding except to do your research, know the local birds, their habits and the preferred habitat and then just get lucky.

I bird for a different reason, I make scale models and dioramas so I like to see the animals myself if possible to make a model.

Here are a few birds I saw on my last trip to Hawaii. I go every year for several reasons, usually I stay for several weeks up to a month at a time, this year I spent most of November on the big island and my family celebrated Thanksgiving there so it was a longer then normal trip but we had a fantastic time.

Here are some of the birds I photographed, sorry the pictures are not that good, on the 3rd day there the case I have for my favorite camera flooded on a scuba dive. I saved the memory card but the camera is beyond repair. The camera I am using now was a Christmas present to myself 2 years ago, cost over $2K and is so complicated to me that I rarely use it, as the photos here will show. I just have to practice, that and the fact that most of the lenses I have for it are for macro photography while I am diving makes taking photos with it a little difficult for me.

Here is a Hawaiian short eared owl, it evolved on the island before humans so there were no rodents for it to feed on, because of this it is a day active owl that hunts birds.

Here are a couple of other endangered birds, the first photo in the upper left is a pair of Hawaiian coots, and the bottom photo is the Hawaiian stilt

Here are some naturalized natives,
Yellow billed cardinal

saffron finches

Finally there are kalij pheasants and red jungle fowl that have also been intorduced and are now "native" to the islands, I saw both but did not get a photo of the pheasant, here is the red jungle fowl

 

[Chickerdoodle13]

I got this book for Christmas and I HIGHLY recommend it. It is on sale at Amazon right now too. It has great illustrations and is very helpful! There is also a guide to north american birds, but I really like this one the best. I just got it for christmas, but my room mate had one and we used to use it all the time.

http://www.amazon.com/Sibley-Guide-...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325439913&sr=1-1

I have some birding pics, all taken in south Jersey

These were taken before I had my SLR, so the quality is not as good.

Sorry for the photo overload! I have so many!

 

[philter4]

Fantastic photos, thanks for posting and no worries, if I could take pictures like that I would have posted more myself!

 

[CheekyChicky44]

Thank You for the Great Pics! I will try to get some up her soon.

Philter4: I would love to go to Hawaii and see the diversity in wildlife over there, islands are so biologically unique. My cousin lives on the big island and has invited us to stay there once we get the time and the money. What all do you scale model? I have been thinking about getting into something like that, but I don’t know if I have the attention to detail, or the patience.

Chickerdoodle13: I ordered the book on Amazon, looks like the perfect guide.
I have a book I call the “Bird bible” http://www.amazon.com/Smithsonian-B...=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325625009&sr=1-4 that has been helpful for identification but the diagrams aren’t as extensive as the Sibley edition. Plus, the thing is so bulky that it is unreasonable to travel with, let alone hike with. Love the pictures, makes me want to get my camera working for the next trip to the water, we don’t have as many shore birds here I don’t think, and they are pretty difficult to see, usually hanging off the coast at a good distance. My next trip to Ocean Shores should produce some Pelican and Cormorant pics though.

 

[CheekyChicky44]

Found one, here is a flock of seagulls at Cape Flattery. Focus is off but I still thought it was neat.

 

[philter4]

Quote:
CheekyChicky, I model things I have seen in nature. I have worked every aspect of exotic animals for most of my life, I have kept, collected, bought, sold, and traded as well as bred all sorts of exotics, mostly medium sized cats (servals and caracals are my favorites) to several types of civets including the endangered binterongs. Because of this I got to travel all over the world and that is what I usually model. Here are just a few pictures of the diorama I am working on right now, it isn't done but it will give you an idea of what I do. The scale I use is 1:22 (which means every inch on the diorama is 22 inches in life) and because of that everything I do has to be scratch built because it is not a dollhouse or model train size.

Here is a photo of some of the palms on the dio

Part of the river bank.

Here are some animals, I did not do all of these but I have several friends who also sculpt and we collaborate on different scenes. they are from a South African diorama I did.
A sloth bear and cub.

And a gharial.

Wild dogs and yellow backed duikers.

Gerenuk feeding.

These are just a few, I have about 100 figures done and over 400 trees and plants.