Shining Lights

An Anna's with a love for posing for photographs? Well I never! Just had to share these.



Extreme portrait!

Golden-crowned Kinglet 2

The Golden-crowned Kinglets have been around for 3 days. Each day they moved further up the park. Originally they were in the two pines near Argos street, the day after they were in the pines on the hill, and after that they took to the taller pines near the playground. There was only one row of pines left but it seems they skipped them for some reason.

I finally managed to get some decent shots of the crown.

Took me about 300 photos but I finally got there. They are just as restless as the rubies.

 

 

To add to this, I had a Ruby-crowned Kinglet in the same tree, and it had its crest raised up. Ruby-crowns very rarely show off their red crown, so this was quite a pleasure to watch. It only had its crest up when it was in the same tree as the GCKLs, so perhaps there was some indirect territorialism going on here.

Closest I'll ever get to a perfect crown shot. Pose isn't great and that twig is in the way but I can't complain.

 On the 2nd I met two birders who came to follow up my sighting--Dan Cooper and Dinuk Maganamma. Unfortunately they were a day too late, but we had interesting conversations (the best perhaps being where Dan assumed from the reports I send in that I was an old man with a beard!). It seems there are not as many younger birders as I had previously thought. On the 1st I emphasized the movement of the birds in the park, noting how the 2nd was probably the last day to see them. Dinuk needed it for a photo-lifer, I assume Dan had seen this bird multiple times already.

I notice they were trying to call the birds in with tapes. I had tried this on the 3rd day but they were not responsive to the song. The ruby-crowned kinglet, however, responded with its territorial, scolding calls to its own song. I have no idea why the golden-crowns are not so eager to entertain.