Purple Finches and Spring leaves

       Aren’t Purple Finches pretty?  If you wish for them to visit you on a regular basis, try offering sunflower seeds, millet, or thistle.

       This male has a drop of water hanging from his beak.

       Here he is again with his better half.   Did you know that House Finches tend to compete with the Purple Finches for resources and usually win out?   This unfortunately, has lead to a dwindling number of Purple Finches.   They do prefer to live in coniferous trees, so if you have a pine tree in your yard, your’e in luck.

Lady cardinals are pretty too!

       Everyone talks about how pretty male cardinals are.   Here are a few pictures of the ladies.   They are quite attractive too, though in a more suble way.

Twisted

       This Downey Woodpecker has to work hard for his food!

∗ Happy 24th birthday Ben!!!   My son turned 24 today.

Happy April 1st!

       My original thought was to do something more plausible for an April fools post, but as you can see it didn’t quite turn out that way because I over did it.   I probably should have stuck with just one squirrel.  Oh well!

Simple animation

       Ben came home for the weekend, and he gave me a lesson on simple animation.   This little clip was created with two photos of the little finch.   But there are three frames that loop over and over.   The third frame is a merging of the two separate photos. I would call it superimposing one photo on top of another, but Ben tells me that the correct terminology for this is extrapolation.

       This animation of the little sparrow was made by Ben. It was the demonstration created by him for my lesson.   If you look carefully at both of these animations, you will notice that the colors are not as vivid or sharp as my usual photographs.   There is a good reason for that.   When you save a photograph, you use a .jpg extension. “Jaypegs” are capable of displaying millions of colors!   To convert the jpg’s into animation, you must change the extension fom .jpg to .gif.   Gifs can only use the color safe pallete of 256 colors.   Your browser will approximate the millions of colors from the original jpg, and by a process called dithering, pare down the photo’s colors.   This unfortunately, can make the animated photos look a little grainy.

Outfoxing a squirrel

       I watched this little guy try to find a way to raid the bird feeder.   Too bad, no bird seed for him today!

Just a few finches

       I get a lot of Gold Finches these days at the thistle feeder and I see signs that their golden color is starting to brighten.

       Shake your tail feathers?

       They are such pretty little birds.

Finch on a wire

       I have a bird feeder that was difficult for me to fill because I needed a step stool to reach it.   I redid the hanging wire on top ( I made it longer and stiffer) so I could slip it off the top of the hook with ease.   As you can see, this little gold finch likes my redesigned wire much better too.

Just a few things

       I can’t Believe how close this pileated woodpecker gets to my front picture window.   I see him every day now.

       Simone has gone back home with my daughter Megan, and Rikki has lost his bird watching buddy.

       This dried astilbe is still standing in my front garden.   to view what it looked like last summer, look HERE.