Hi, All:
It's too overcast and cold (for Phoenix, anyway, 60 degrees is COLD) and miserable to go anywhere today, so I decided to practice my photography on the Inca Doves that are at my apartment. I know the tree where they go to roost, so I figured it would be a great time to practice my spot metering and manual focus skills on these readily available birds. I have never seen anything but grackles, mourning doves, Inca Doves, pigeons, and house sparrows, so imagine my suprise when I saw not one, but TWO songbirds flitting about in what I call the "Inca Dove Tree". I also saw a hummingbird singing it's heart out in a neighboring tree. It's amazing what you notice when you start looking.
The first bird is an Inca Dove, I think the 2nd is a male house finch, the hummingbird I'm going to identify as Anna's. My reasoning is that Anna's and Costa's are probably the most common around here, but Costa's hummingbirds prefer a desert habitat, according to my field guide, while Anna's prefer 'open woods, garden's and park's'which is closer to my apartment habitat. Pictures III and IV are the same bird, could not get a clear photo. It's a grey bird with a yellow face, very tiny. I'm not sure what it is.
As a side note, it has occurred to me that given the number of apartment buildings in most major cities, if developers hired landscapers to plant native bird and butterfly friendly plants on their complexes, they could probably increase biodiversity by 20-30% in the cities. And it's hard to imagine anyone not liking seeing birds and butterflies on their way to work.
It's too overcast and cold (for Phoenix, anyway, 60 degrees is COLD) and miserable to go anywhere today, so I decided to practice my photography on the Inca Doves that are at my apartment. I know the tree where they go to roost, so I figured it would be a great time to practice my spot metering and manual focus skills on these readily available birds. I have never seen anything but grackles, mourning doves, Inca Doves, pigeons, and house sparrows, so imagine my suprise when I saw not one, but TWO songbirds flitting about in what I call the "Inca Dove Tree". I also saw a hummingbird singing it's heart out in a neighboring tree. It's amazing what you notice when you start looking.
The first bird is an Inca Dove, I think the 2nd is a male house finch, the hummingbird I'm going to identify as Anna's. My reasoning is that Anna's and Costa's are probably the most common around here, but Costa's hummingbirds prefer a desert habitat, according to my field guide, while Anna's prefer 'open woods, garden's and park's'which is closer to my apartment habitat. Pictures III and IV are the same bird, could not get a clear photo. It's a grey bird with a yellow face, very tiny. I'm not sure what it is.
As a side note, it has occurred to me that given the number of apartment buildings in most major cities, if developers hired landscapers to plant native bird and butterfly friendly plants on their complexes, they could probably increase biodiversity by 20-30% in the cities. And it's hard to imagine anyone not liking seeing birds and butterflies on their way to work.
