Finally!!!

Have you ever waited for what seemed to be “forever”, then without warning, your wish was granted? Well, one of my seemingly forever wishes was just granted yesterday afternoon!

One of my nemesis birds has been the beautiful Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum). Yeh, I’ve seen them before … but always at a long distance and too far away to get really good images. But that has changed. Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting on my bed, working on a laptop computer, when a small group of 4 Cedar Waxwings suddenly appeared just outside the bedroom window, on a holly bush! I was no further than 10 feet from them :o) Fortunately, my camera was sitting beside me on the bed (that holly bush has been drawing a lot of different birds to it over the past couple of days, so the camera was ready for action). The extreme cold and snow has made those bright red berries very tantalizing to the birds!).

Here are a few images I made yesterday of my nemesis bird:

Cedar Waxwing

Cedar Waxwing

Cedar Waxwing

Cedar Waxwing

Cedar Waxwing

Cedar Waxwing

 

I should note that all of these images were made from the warmth of my house, shooting through a bedroom window. I normally don’t like shooting through glass, but I don’t have a lot of choice when it comes to shooting birds on the holly bushes. To get acceptable images through the glass, I have found that removing the outdoor screen on this window is a big help. Also, when winter hits, I make sure the glass is scrupulously clean, both inside and outside! And when shooting, I get crisper images when I shoot perpendicular to the glass … shooting at an angle often results in lower quality images.

The holly bushes (I have 3) were planted when we moved into our rural home, over 12 years ago. As a Master Gardener, I planted them mainly because the front of the house has a lot of shade. At that time, I didn’t even realize their worth as a bird food source. But over the past couple of winters, more and more species of birds have been attracted to the bright red berries. In fact, I’m working on plans to add more wildlife-attracting plants to the front of the house. Certainly, more holly bushes will be included! In additional posts, I’ll share some more bird species that I now readily see at these wonderful shrubs.

If you enjoyed this post, please feel free to share this link with others who you feel may enjoy it!

Posted in Nature Photography, Photography Tips
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .
Permalink bookmark.
Follow comments: RSS feed for this post.
Trackbacks are closed, but you can post a comment.