Hello From Michigan (1 Viewer)

[belleswell]

We both retired a couple years ago and moved from the big city where we had been our entire lives and bought a wonderful home in the country complete with a nice sized pond and some acreage. The number of different birds I've seen here and taken pics of from my man cave view of the pond is now almost 7 dozen.

Some highlights include watching a Barred owl get a muskrat out of our pond at the far end about a week ago. Very cool because I do not like the damage the muskrats cause to the pond. I was amazed that an owl that weighs a little less than 2 lbs. could kill and carry off a muskrat that probably weighed more than she does. Also new to me when I first seen them last year, ( I had to look up many of these in the Audubon's Book Of North American Birds), were Indigo Buntings, Eastern Bluebirds, Rose-Breasted Grosbeaks, Brown Thrashers, Hooded Mergansers, and many others I can now id. I have a bunch of pics I've uploaded at Imgur and I'll try posting a few here.

We also have three nesting pair of wood ducks in the pond, up from one last year, but between birds of prey, snapping turtles, foxes, and coyotes, the odds are stacked against them. I live trapped one of two large snappers in the pond last summer and relocated it to a wetland area with some marshland a few miles from where we live, so the ducklings we watched grow last year in the pond would not start disappearing.

I also have taken recent pics of Pileated Woodpeckers, ( both male and female), Red Bellied Woodpeckers ( I even got some shots where you can see the red on the lower abdomen), Downy Woodpeckers, Hairy Woodpeckers, Towee's, brown Thrashers, Marsh Hawk, 3 varieties of Finches etc. The list is long.

Last summer we had a Bald Eagle grab medium sized bass from the pond on two occasions. Watching them fly off with a 15 to 20 inch bass in their talons had my mouth hanging open. We had a Golden Eagle grab a Mourning dove from a covey of them that were hanging out by the bird feeders this last winter. It's amazing whats going on right outside the window.

Our most memorable Marty Stuaffer moment occured last year in May when we watched a large doe give birth to 2 fawns 50 yards from our home all the while her twin bucks from the prior year ( they were just starting to grow their first set of antlers watched Mom giving birth). After about 20 minutes of watching mom lick clean the newborns, the 1 year old twins that had been watching from about 50 feet away came in to check out the new fawns. The doe, and last years twin bucks were aware of our presence in the home taking pics from the window , but we were apparently not enough of a threat for them to run off.

Living the dream. Serenity now.


Cheers, J

First post attempt at posting my first pics here from Imgur.

Barred Owl

Wood Ducks - The males are very handsome and one of the prettiest ducks imo.

Wood ducks- Mom doing a drive by with the ducklings in tow.
Notice the one duckling looking up at the squirrel.

Pileated Woodpeck - This guy is huge

Rose-Breasted Grosbeak

Indigo Bunting

Orioles, Baltimore - Table For Two

Turkey and Squirrel

New born twins with one of last years twin bucks coming in to check out
the new borns.

Just to put a face to my name here is a vid I made about 10 years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW6UK7ofXiw

Edit: A few questions. Is there a reason why my pics are only showing as links and not pics? Do I have to meet a certain number of posts before they would appear as pictures? If so, how many? Or do I need to upload them here to show as pics? Or does this site not have pics to save on bandwidth? Thanks

 

[KC Foggin]

Hi ya J and a warm welcome to you from those of us on staff here at Birdforum :t:

You've got some lovely photos and we hope to see a few in the Gallery. The Gallery guidelines are listed on the top of the page Enjoy!

 

[belleswell]

Hi ya J and a warm welcome to you from those of us on staff here at Birdforum :t:

You've got some lovely photos and we hope to see a few in the Gallery. The Gallery guidelines are listed on the top of the page Enjoy!

Thankyou Sir.
A few questions. Is there a reason why my pics are only showing as links and not pics? Do I have to meet a certain number of posts before they would appear as pictures in any given post? If so, how many? Or do I need to upload them here to show as pics? Or does this site not have pics in threads to save on bandwidth? Thanks

 

[delia todd]

Hi belleswell and a warm welcome from me too.

Your pictures are showing as links as you have posted the link in your post. You can certainly post pictures here in a thread or, as KC suggested, in our Gallery. We'd really love to see them there, where they have a wider audience too.

To upload your pictures, first make sure they're around 900 to 1000 pixels on the longest side. Save a copy to your desktop.

To upload the pictures in a thread, make sure you're in an advanced posting mode, either by starting a new thread, or by clicking on Post Reply.

After you've typed your comment, scroll down below the message pane and you will see a grey Manage Attachments button.

Click on that and then Browse for your first picture and double click on it. Click on Upload and wait a few seconds until you see the filename appear in the box.

You can do this 4 more times for each post (the maximum is 5 pictures per post, but there is no limit in the thread).

Close the box.

You can check the pictures are there if you click on Preview.

When you submit your post the pictures should appear at the bottom.

Do come back if you need more assistance.

I hope you enjoy your time here with us.

 

[belleswell]

Hi belleswell and a warm welcome from me too.

Your pictures are showing as links as you have posted the link in your post. You can certainly post pictures here in a thread or, as KC suggested, in our Gallery. We'd really love to see them there, where they have a wider audience too.

To upload your pictures, first make sure they're around 900 to 1000 pixels on the longest side. Save a copy to your desktop.

To upload the pictures in a thread, make sure you're in an advanced posting mode, either by starting a new thread, or by clicking on Post Reply.

After you've typed your comment, scroll down below the message pane and you will see a grey Manage Attachments button.

Click on that and then Browse for your first picture and double click on it. Click on Upload and wait a few seconds until you see the filename appear in the box.

You can do this 4 more times for each post (the maximum is 5 pictures per post, but there is no limit in the thread).

Close the box.

You can check the pictures are there if you click on Preview.

When you submit your post the pictures should appear at the bottom.

Do come back if you need more assistance.

I hope you enjoy your time here with us.

Thanks so much Delia Todd,
I'm assuming your familiar with Imgur. This is where I have my pics. The original size is larger than the size you mentioned, which would mean trying to resize them to fit the gallery. Downsizing the pixels on any pic I have which are all larger than the size you mentioned, is extremely time consuming.

At Imgur I have used the "huge thumbnail" sized pics and then copied the "BBCode" for "forums and message boards".This is to scale down the size of the pics. This has worked at all other forums I'm a member of, mostly guitar and music forums, but the huge thumbnail BBCode worked for showing pics at these other forums, and not just the links. My first post here shows only the links. Is there a different link at Imgur I should use for having these show up as pictures instead of links? Trying to resize every pic I have before posting is something that takes way too much time to do. I'm now assuming that having the pics show up as links the way I posted them (aside from exceeding the number per post) is a band width issue the forum uses.
Thank you for your answers.
J

 

[KC Foggin]

Thankyou Sir.

BTW, I'm a gal, not a sir

 

[belleswell]

BTW, I'm a gal, not a sir

Sorry about that.|:$|

 

[delia todd]

Hi J

No, I'm sorry, Imgur is a foreign land to me It did take an awful long time for the picture to open when I clicked on the first link, a lovely owl, eventually showed itself.

 

[belleswell]

Hi J

No, I'm sorry, Imgur is a foreign land to me It did take an awful long time for the picture to open when I clicked on the first link, a lovely owl, eventually showed itself.

I've since edited the post and used the advance option for uploading 5 of the 11 pics I originally posted. It's to bad that this forum does not allow a direct link from imgur for posting.|=(|

I added 5 in the first post and 5 more here from the first post.

 

[Lisa W]

Hello and welcome to the forum. Those are some very nice photos you have shown us.

 

[belleswell]

Thanks for the welcome. Most of my pics are from inside my man cave looking at the pond. I'm using a Canon SX 60, but shooting through either the window or the sliding door. The far end of the pond from my tripod is about 80 yards away, and some of the closer shots, are about 10 to 15 yards away. After a year of taking pics of all of the birds, not to mention the mammals, I'm up to about 70 different species of birds outside of the window. When I include walks through our woods, I can add about another dozen or so. For being life long city folk and retiring to this beautiful idylic country home 2 years ago, I'm amazed at the sheer number of different birds and mammals we've seen.

At your suggestion, I added 3 bird photos to the gallery which only took a half hour. (I had to resize one of them.)

 

[delia todd]

At your suggestion, I added 3 bird photos to the gallery which only took a half hour. (I had to resize one of them.)

Oh goodie .... I'll go and have a look in a minute.

It will get quicker, honest. As you get used to doing it.

I'm not sure if I'll be talking about the same thing as you are (I'm a bit technically challenged) but I think Admin don't like pictures embedded directly from outside sources, as the links can too easily get broken, if the host website has problems... or closes altogether. Uploaded images like you have done here, are safe from that kind of hiccup.

 

[ClarkWGriswold]

Hi J and welcome to Birdforum from another SX60 user.

Rich

 

[Fritz73]

Hola J! Welcome to Birdforum :t:

 

[Kits]

Welcome to BirdForum! I am sure you will find lots to interest you here, and I hope you enjoy your visits.