Justine's Halloween: grackles

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

A crow dropped by for a photo shoot today

As I've told a few of you, I love crows but usually find photographing them difficult. They have this way of appearing and looking cool when I don't have my camera with me. So I run inside and grab my camera, only to come out and find no crows. But today was different! I was outside and one flew down across the street and said its little crow hello of "Caw, Caw". I ran indoors and grabbed my camera, and guess what? The crow was still there!

So I made the most of it and took tons of photos. The crow nicely posed, cawed, and even had a snack.

Caw Caw!

Nice legs! They look so funny with the reflection, like he's wearing a pair of capris.

As I said before, this crow had a snack when he found a worm in the water. I realized as I took this pic that I'd never seen a crow eating before. I was surprised to see it acting like the many robins I've watched, listening for and pulling out a worm.

I like the reflection in this photo. It gives the illusion that this crow is in the middle of a tug of war over that worm.

After the crow had a snack, it flew up into a tree. So I followed it to take a few more shots. You can see how sharp the beak is here:

This last one isn't a crow, but I liked the photo so I thought I'd include it. Look at those eyes! It's a grackle, which you might remember from one of my previous blog posts: Getting to know the grackles. Wow, looking back at that old blog post reminded me of how intense a grackle's eyes can be!

This one looks really focused on something. I'm glad that "something" wasn't me! Grackles mean business.

So, have you guys been doing any birdwatching now that spring is here? I'd be interested to hear about the kinds of birds you've been seeing. The bird species seem to vary a lot depending on where you are and which ones are migrating through.

Monday, May 18, 2015

Getting to know the grackles

I've been wanting to write a blog post showing the crows that I see all the time, but when it came down to photographing them, they never seemed to be flying by. I did find myself surrounded by a lot of other black birds this spring. I think they are grackles. While they're not crows, grackles can be plenty spooky. Especially when you close in on them with your camera lens! It's funny how when you start seeing the details of something close up it's like a whole new world.

I learned a lot about these birds and their lifestyle from photographing them. I watched them fly around, hunt for food, try to pick up other birds, look impressive, look scary (the same as looking impressive), and just hang out in the trees.

They fluff themselves out as much as possible to either look cool to attract a mate or look big and tough to ward off an enemy.

They have never been aggressive toward me, but I wouldn't want to be a worm in their vicinity! They take on a cold, calculating look while hunting for food.

On the hunt...

Success!

This one looks like he's eating a hot dog, but that's probably part of a worm.

I took a few photos of the birds hunting for worms together. They took advantage of the wet dirt. As you can maybe tell, it was raining when I took these.

That one was really digging in!

Some of the things I noticed from photographing the birds is the subtlety of their coloring. From a distance I thought they were entirely black. In the sun you can see that they have a bright blue tint to the feathers around their heads and an almost brown or maroon color on their tail feathers. I could also see their bright yellow eyes.

I also got a good view of those talons!

The birds are very flexible and I saw them contort themselves every which way in the trees.

Another interesting thing I noticed was how their eyes sometimes went cloudy. I wonder if the birds have a second eyelid? Does anyone know about that? You can see how the eye is kind of whitish and glossy. A second later it was back to its usual yellow with a pupil.