Fun Friday: Fresh Fledgling

A couple of days ago, while I was walking to one of my wildflower gardens to photograph wildflowers and dragonflies, I flushed a new fledgling bird from the dense woods that runs along one side of my long, gravel driveway. Surprisingly, it was not too frightened of me. Fortunately, I had my 100-400mm lens on my camera. Here are a few images I captured of this newly-fledged bird:

Fledgling bird (Blue Grosbeak?)

Fledgling bird (Blue Grosbeak?)

The images were tough to capture, as I was shooting without a tripod and shooting into the heavy woods (low light), so my shutter speed was extremely slow. And the woods are very dense in places.

I would appreciate any species identification that anyone can supply. Being so small, it was very difficult to spot any clear colors or markings that would help identify it. However, I’m leaning towards this being a Blue Grosbeak (Passerina caerulea). I say this because I observed a male Blue Grosbeak on an overhead power line, just above us, that was very intent on watching me as I photographed the fledgling. And another, similar-sized and brownish (female grosbeak?) bird flew into the woods with a caterpillar in her mouth … probably to feed this hungry, new explorer of the world.

Photographic Equipment Used:

  • Canon 5D Mark 3 body
  • Canon EF 100-400mm, f/4.5-f/5.6 telephoto lens + Canon 1.4X TC, totaling 560mm used
  • Handheld
  • ISO 800
  • Aperture f/8
  • Shutter 1/25 sec. and 1/30 sec.
Posted in Bird Photography, Nature Photography
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