Portraits of the Wild World -
Unique Wildlife Photography


Hundreds of stunning images
using only natural light

Archive for the ‘Birds’ Category

Racing cardinal

Earlier a sonnet, and now a nervy cardinal races toward the weekend.

Buy a print of this image.

See a spring pause.
Cardinal

Wild Notes

From reader and correspondent Timothy Ladd, a sonnet.

——— Wild Notes ———

The charming cardinal is our year-round friend,
Warbling wild notes unnoticed in the pines,
While other gaudy plumes will have us spend
Our greater powers on their rarer signs.
Content yourselves with easy arcs of swallows,
Twittering till the shallow end of day.
The jay will startle. Every starling follows
Raucously its twin. House sparrows say
Their feeble thoughts in hordes so loud
It drives the finch away. And we, bereft,
Hear feathers of a nightingale in cloud
Overhead, find down an eagle must have left,
And disregard all glory we have heard
Come streaming from that scarlet bird.

Tenhave Woods

Saturday was the Royal Oak Nature Society’s 2008 Open House at Tenhave Woods and despite the cool and sometimes rainy conditions I managed to crawl on my belly like a reptile to find this ant traversing a serrated leaf edge.

Buy a print of this image.

See an ant in a sea of gold.
Ant

Avian obscenities

Tiny yellow bundles of energy, two male goldfinches shout avian obscenities midair.

Not a good photograph, but it gives an idea of their Lilliputian passion.

See two birds collide.
Two Goldfinches

The Claws That Catch

A fierce aerial battle between two feisty starlings, they always seem to recover with no apparent harm after these tiffs.

Buy a print of this image.


See an avian mini-Olympics.

Starlings

Startled

A startled Grackle slices through the air on a cold March evening.

Buy a print of this image.

See a late-afternoon aerial argument.
Grackle

Looking up

Spring is finally looking up here in southeast Michigan, and this little finch seems to agree.

See a rare example of avian Phrenology.
Finch

Love and Marriage

Cue Sinatra.

This pair of finches has been hanging around for a little while, the male is pretty feisty.

Captions are welcome.
Finches
Male Finch

Fearless and willful

Stirring the wind, fearless and willful, frozen in flight.

Some areas of the lower sparrow’s wings have been worn raw, a hard life I’m sure.

Buy a print of this image.

We’re snowbound again, a wintry spring start. See two sparrows battling the winter wind.
Sparrows in flight

Attacking the wind

A nicely marked female House Finch attacks the wind.

Buy a print of this image.

See a cardinal on the rise.
House Finch

The great seed dispute

From earlier in this never-ending winter, a female cardinal tries some not-so friendly persuasion on a sparrow during a seed dispute.

Buy a print of this image.

See an event from the Avian Olympics.
Cardinal and sparrow