Winged Ambassadors

Gifts of the Bird Feeder

It’s not always necessary to travel long distances in order visit awesome places. Sometimes, it’s what we do, and how we choose to be that makes the space awesome right where we are. Sometimes all it takes is to invite life to visit our space, by making our space inviting to life. For us, the addition of a bird feeder a few days ago was a wonderful way to get better acquainted with the life around us, and for the life around us to get better acquainted with us. Let me introduce “the finches,” actually they are referred to as House Finches (Carpodacus mexicanus), a family of perhaps 20 or more who now visit our backyard several times each day.

It never occurred to me that it would bring such delights to our little part of the world. We hear them all around us, but they often remain virtually invisible, born of a natural sensitivity and wariness that goes with small, vulnerable, and having a high metabolism.

They bring the whole family over. The red crested ones are males. The gray ones, female. Occasionally, a green one appears. Perhaps a “cousin” here for the winter.

This all started after “D” put a “condo” feeder in our desert backyard. It’s suspended on its own hook stand. After she loaded it up with food, they started coming. While this was okay with the extra zoom lens, I wanted some closer shots, so she picked up a “house” bird feeder, which we hung just outside the patio door. That worked real nicely!

Who knew this would be so entertaining?

While I found simply snapping photo after photo fascinating, I wanted to get even closer, and bring their beauty out even more. Their wings moved so quickly, I needed to change the shutter speed drastically in order to get clearer images. However, the faster the shutter speed, the darker the resulting image.

A few adjustments on the camera… upping ISO setting to 1600, and increasing the shutter speed to 1/5000^th of a second yielded some pretty awesome images. The camera can go even faster if the light is adequate. Anything faster that this produced images that were too dark today. I’d love to see how they’d look at 1/8000^th sec.

In fact, I already have far more than would ever be prudent to try to show here, but it’s a fine example of life that is waiting to be appreciated when we’re ready, and will appreciate you back.

In my “noticing” the house finch community in our neighborhood, I now realize that they “notice” us back. Although there’s no food for them inside, several have made attempts to enter our office through the patio door. Since it has been closed each time, the little wonders have only gained headaches for their trouble, but who knows, one day we may let ’em in.

Their chatter is friendly, and they are ever vigilant for the slightest sign of danger, which can be perceived as simple movement to them. If we venture onto the patio they will fly up into the nearby palo verde trees, sit patiently and watch until we go back inside. Then, within a few minutes, they’ll return to continue feeding, prospecting, and chattering.

There’s no real rhyme or reason to convey here, simply the wonder of these creatures. If you’d like to see more, I’ll be happy to post more, plus some video.

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