The Yardbirds

No, not the English rock band of the 1960s. Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Keith Relf, Jim McCarty, and Chris Dreja will not appear in this post except for in this sentence. As the rain works its way through the northeastern United States, I have gotten little chance to get out and really get lost in a full day shoot. However, in the small amount of time between rain showers, I was able to capture a frequent visitor to my back yard.If you ask me, Mourning Doves just seem like a cleaner, less colorful pigeon. Almost seems like a bird that you would expect to see hanging around a local underpass (or overpass, whatever you prefer) or perched inside the "a" of a Shaw's Supermarket sign. Take this one for example (above). There doesn't seem to be anything overly spectacular about it at first look. It just sits there perched on that branch seeming very uninterested about the man with the camera pointed at it. But, that is what I started to find very likable about this bird in particular. My normal experience when trying to photograph birds up close involves me trying to find out how close I can get before the bird starts to turn and walk away or shows me that it is aware that I am there. This proves to be irritating at times as I will frequently miss out on a good shot because I was trying to get to close. This one, however, just seemed to hang around. It definitely seemed to know I was there, yet it didn't really seem frightened enough to fly away so I used this to my advantage.This is the same bird pictured above. Since he was intent on staying around, I started to inch closer and closer. No sudden movements were involved as I did not want to take the current situation for granted. As I moved closer, it started to inch down the limb of the tree into a different position but it was still not frightened enough to leave. I was able to take position about 4-5 feet from the limb with the bird about 10 feet above me. About 30 seconds after this shot, the skies opened up again and the sound of thunder frightened the bird enough to get him to fly off to a different location.

The forecast for this week doesn't look to promising, but I will try to look for some opportunities between the showers to sneak out and see what I can find.