Red Breasted Nuthatch

These pictures were taken on September 25th, 2009 in our back yard.

American Mink - Neovison vison

These pictures were taken on October 3rd, 2009 in our back yard. The scientific name used to be Mustela Vison but was recently reclassified as Neovison Vison. They are a member of the Weasel family and are heavily prized for their fir. They are excellent swimmers and eat fish, frogs, rabbits or anything else they can catch. There main predators are owls, hawks, fox and coyotes. I spotted this guy going around the edge of a pond in our back yard. He came up from the edge of the pond and for a few moments just sat there and looked at me even though I was only about 30 feet away. He didn't appear to mind my presence and after a few moments continued his search for frogs or whatever else he could find to eat.

Black Capped Chickadee

These pictures were taken on September 25th & 27th, 2009 in our back yard. Chickadee's are so friendly that they will eat out of your hand. I haven't tried to train them to do this but when I put out bird seed, especially black oil sunflowers, they will land on the feeder as I'm putting seeds in it.

Ruby Throated Hummingbird

These pictures were taken on August 2nd, 3rd & 4th, 2009 in our back yard. Hummingbirds are tricky little guys to photograph. I've been trying to stop wing motion, get the male where his throat turns out ruby red. These shots were taken at f7.1, ISO varied from 400 to 800 and shutter speed varied from 1/4000 to 1/8000. I was shooting with a flash with a better beamer attached and the flash set at +2. These photos aren't bad but I want ones that are much better and preferrably at a flower.

Great Spangled Fritillary butterfly

These pictures were taken on August 19th, 2009 in our back yard. I like the shots where he's sitting on top of a Purple Cone Flower.

Lilly flower

These pictures were taken on August 19th, 2009 in our back yard. I was using a Canon 100-400mm lens, focal length varied from 250 to 400mm, ISO=400, f14 and shutter speed varied from 1/250 to 1/1000.

Hosta flower

This picture was taken on August 19th, 2009 in our back yard.

Galardia flower

These pictures were taken on August 19th, 2009 in our back yard.

Goldfinch - Female

These pictures were taken on August 2nd, 2009 in our back yard. I was in our back yard trying to shoot hummingbird when this little guy appeared with a terrific pose. I was shooting into the sun which is a no no, but the pose was so great I had to take the shot.

Summer Azure butterfly

These pictures were taken on August 19th, 2009 in our back yard. Camera setting were f14 at 1/320th of a second, ISO=400 at 400mm. The flower he's sitting on is a Brown Eyed Susan.

Bullfrog

This picture was taken on July 31st, 2009 in our back yard.

Lillys and other flowers

These pictures were taken on July 31st, 2009 in our back yard. I'm trying to develop a technique for taking pictures of flowers. These pictures were taken with a Canon 40D camera with an EOS 100-400mm lens and most shots were at about 400mm. One these shots I used f16 or f22 settings so that I would have a wider depth of field to keep all of the flower in focus. This did cause some of the backgrounds to be a little messy instead of having a completely out of focus, uniform background. I also used a flash with a better beamer attached to concentrate the light on the flower and in a lot of cases, make the background under exposed and uniform. I used a manual exposure and took test shots to gain the effect I was after. Shutter speed for most of the shots was about 1/200th of a second. ISO was set at 400. Some of the shots came out fairly good and I hope you like them. Double click on the images to see the real detail of these flowers.