View allAll Photos Tagged Feeding
Proverbs 30:8 King James Version (KJV)
8 Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me:
Die kleinen Haubentaucher sind unersättlich und rufen andauernd nach neuem Futter, welches die Eltern unermüdlich heranschaffen... dabei kann es aber auch mal passieren, dass die Beute für die kleinen noch etwas zu gross ist wie auch hier.. dennoch wurde die Beute mit Freude empfangen.. :-)
Das Bild ist bis auf ein paar Pixel am Rand ein Fullframe..
Galah (Eolophus roseicapilla) juvenile female
Mum feeding the youngster at the Woodville Oval on this day in 2020.
Rainbow Lorikeet (Trichoglossus haematodus) juvenile adult
The juvenile (on the left) that featured yesterday being fed.
A couple of avocets poking around in the mud at low tide, looking for something to eat. Burlingame, California.
A male House Finch working extremely hard to feed his two fledglings. These little ones were very demanding, and Papa is looking a bit disheveled. Photo taken in our backyard in Camas, Washington.
It may not be the actual first born grebe baby but it was the first time I caught a feeding by daddy. This was before he started catching fish for the babies.
Chrysolina cerealis is one of the most colorful beetles found in Central Europe. It belongs to the family Chrysomelidae and can reach a size of 5.5 - 10 mm.
Adults can be found from April through September. Both larvae and adults feed on Wild Thyme. The flying abiliity of the species is rather poor and it is rated as "Endangered" in Germany's List of Endangered Species.
An adult barn swallow in flight feeds one of its perched babies from this year.
Terrell's Island Preserve
Winnebago County, Wisconsin
JL501206
I took a snap of these deers glazing the grass at a very close range. It was actually near the parking lot at one of the outlook points inside the Badlands National Park.
check out Dragonflydreams88, Sher and I went on this adventure together and I'm sure she will be posting her images....awesome trip.
The pale chanting goshawk is an opportunistic raptor and eats a wide variety of prey including small mammals, lizards, birds, large insects and carrion. It has also been recorded predating upon Tent tortoise and Leopard tortoise hatchlings which are swallowed whole while the shell is still soft. There is some evidence of social hunting in breeding groups but solitary hunting is the norm. Pale chanting goshawks commonly associate with foraging Honey badgers and feed on organisms that are flushed by the Honey badger's feeding activity. This association increases the hunting opportunities and prey capture success of the pale chanting goshawk while the honey badger does not suffer any loss of foraging efficiency. (Wikipedia)
In the warmth of an old trunk...
"Ana Chata" Mountain, "Pedra do Baú" Complex, São Bento do Sapucaí, São Paulo, Brazil.
Eurasian Jay (Garrulus glandarius)
My best photos are here: www.lacerta-bilineata.com/ticino-best-photos-of-southern-...
More TICINO/TESSIN Wildlife Photos (all taken in my garden in Monteggio/Ti, Switzerland): it.lacerta-bilineata.com/ramarro-occidentale-lacerta-bili...
If you're interested, you'll find a more detailed closeup here (it's the 8th photo from the top): www.lacerta-bilineata.com/western-green-lizard-lacerta-bi...
My latest ANIMAL VIDEO (it's very brief but pretty unusual: a tiny wall lizard attacks two young great tits): www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQqkSsyrm7E
THE STORY BEHIND THE PHOTO: MY LONG AND ARDUOUS JOURNEY TO BIRD PHOTOGRAPHY
If you've set yourself the challenge of exclusively shooting the wildlife in your own back yard, you might find - as I did - that bird photography is really, really hard.
It's not that reptiles are easy to photograph either, mind - but at least the ones in my garden stay (for the most part) on the ground, and one can learn how to carefully approach them with a camera. They're also clearly egoists, which from a photographer's point of view is is a great character trait: if a lizard detects a human in its vicinity, it's only interested in saving its own skin, and it won't alarm its buddies.
But birds... oh man. Over the years, my feathered friends and I have developed a lovely routine that now defines our peaceful co-existence. As soon as I as much as open a window (let alone the door), I'm instantly greeted by an eruption of panicky fluttering and hysterical shouts from my garden: "SAVE YOUR WOMEN AND CHILDREN AND FLY FOR YOUR LIVES: THE HAIRLESS, PINK MONSTER IS COMING!!! (Yes, I speak bird, and I know that this is exactly what they are shouting 😉).
Needless to say, with the exception of the redstart I already showed here, all my efforts to get the kind of detailed shots I usually strive for with my nature photography ended in complete failure and utter disillusionment. I was ready to give up on stalking the winged misanthropes in my garden altogether, but then winter came - and changed everything.
One day this past January I observed my neighbor Signora P - a kind, elderly Italian lady - putting something on the low garden wall in front of my house. At first I thought she was just putting some treat there for her cat Romeo; the young tom patrols that wall constantly (it's his favorite spot in the garden, and during the warmer months he usually lurks in the thick foliage next to it to prey on lizards).
But once I detected a lot of movement on that wall through my window, I understood she had put a little pile of bread crumbs there; she was feeding the birds who soon arrived in flocks. This was certainly well-intended on my neighbor's part, but her noble action came with a catch, and I'm afraid quite literally.
When I took a stroll through my garden the next day I discovered a suspicious amount of feathers on the ground next to the wall. Romeo had apparently switched from his low-calorie summer diet (lizard) to more energy-rich meals consisting of "fowl" (it was winter after all, so from a nutritionist's point of view this made sense).
I would find fresh traces of Romeo's victims (mostly feathers, but also the odd wing) in my garden over the following days; so my first intuition that my neighbor was feeding her cat hadn't been that far off after all, as Romeo was now clearly being "served" fresh birds on a daily basis. And although the hungry visitors seemed to be aware of the danger and became slightly more prudent, they just couldn't resist the tasty snacks Signora P put on that wall - and neither could Romeo.
It was obvious that I had to act, but talking to my neighbor - who is as stubborn as she is kind - would have been futile, I knew that much. I pondered the matter long and hard - until a light bulb went off in my head. The idea was genius. If successful, what I had in mind would not only increase the birds' chances of surviving Romeo's appetite, but also greatly benefit my own photographic endeavors.
I started to enact my master plan the very next day by buying a giant bag of bird feed (consisting mainly of sunflower seeds) from the store. Then I dragged a huge piece of a tree trunk (approx. 120 cm in height) that we normally chop firewood on from the shed out into the garden and emptied almost half of the bag's content on top of it. Signora P's buffet for birds (and cats) was about to get some serious competition 😊.
My reasoning was as follows: not only would the birds be lured away from the fatally low garden wall to a place where they were safe from the cat - there was nothing around that tree trunk that provided cover for a predator, and the birds had a nice 360° view around it at all times - but I was also able to photograph them while hiding in the shed.
However, in order for my plan to work there was one little extra measure I had to take, and it was one that risked lowering my own life expectancy considerably once the owner of the property - my mom - discovered it. You see, our shed is completely windowless, so if I wanted to use it as a blind, I had no choice but to cut a hole into one of its wooden walls... which I promptly did (I figured all's fair in love - and photography 😉).
Granted, I have absolutely zero carpentering skills, and it showed. That hole was an ugly mess: the shed's wall seemed to have had an encounter with Jack Nicholson's ax-wielding lunatic character from the film 'The Shining'. Needless to say, I was incredibly proud of my work (I mean, come on: there now was a hole where before there wasn't a hole, and it was big enough for the lens of my camera to peek through, so it was mission accomplished as far as I was concerned).
Now all I had to do was wait for the birds to discover the tree trunk. In the meantime I started to mentally prepare myself for the inevitable confrontation with my mom and go through possible explanations for that splintering hole in the wall (it was either gonna be a rabid woodpecker attack or an emergency rescue mission with a feeding tube for a little kid that had accidentally locked himself inside the shed - both seemed valid options, though I slightly preferred the locked-in kid due to the involved drama and heroism 😉).
A whole day went by, and not a single bird visited the sunflower seeds. I had expected that it might take a few hours until the first of the ever curious great tits or blue tits would show up, but given how tiny my garden is, an entire day seemed excessive. Then another day came and went: the birds kept flocking to the bread crumbs on the wall, and my tree trunk kept collecting dust. To add injury to insult, a few fresh feathers on the ground were proof that Romeo was still feasting.
It was incredibly frustrating: I provided my winged guests with a much better view - plus a higher chance of surviving the cuisine - than Signora P's place; I risked (almost) certain death at the hands of my own mother (OK, the act of vandalism on the shed I had committed for my own benefit, but still), yet the birds kept ignoring me.
Then, after three days, just before sunset, I spotted a single blue tit on the tree trunk picking away at the sunflower seeds.
When I got up the next morning I immediately realized that the loud noise that accompanies each and every tit activity had shifted from the wall to the shed. At last the dam had broken: there was a flurry of movement around the tree trunk, and I counted at least 5 different species of birds feasting on the sunflower seeds.
From day 4 onward my plan worked beautifully: the birds now indeed mostly ignored Romeo's "snack wall" and kept to the tree trunk. And yes, I was able to play peeping tom from behind the shed's wall and photograph them!! 😊
Thus, dear readers, I finally managed to produce some acceptable bird photos, and I had even saved my feathered friends from a deadly foe in the process. All through winter and spring I took advantage of my new bird hide, and in late May I started mixing some cherries with the sunflower seeds. The idea was to attract a Eurasian jay (Garrulus glandarius), and as you can see, it worked!
It took me almost three weeks and more than a few tricks to capture that clever fella, but given how long I've been rambling here already, that's a story for another day. As for my mom, she still doesn't know about the hole in the wall, so please don't snitch! 😉.
I hope you like the photo and wish you all a wonderful weekend! Many greetings from Switzerland, and as always: let me know what you think in the comments 🙏 😊 ❤!
P.S. if anyone has their own funny tale about the obstacles we photographers are prepared to overcome for a desired photo, please write it in the comments: I love such stories 😊
It's feeding time for the young swallows. You can hear them getting loud as one of the parents approach with a fresh catch, as if they would be saying: "Pick me, pick me!"
The juvenile blue jays are as big as mom and dad but have les blue on their heads, and they never stop squawking! A little wing flapping helps get mom's attention too...
Papa Bluebird feeding a mealworm to one of his youngsters. They have been making regular visits to the mealworm feeder, as often as five times a day. I have a large mealworm feeder, with a roof to offer protection, and large enough for as many as eight bluebirds to be inside at one time. Dad has been teaching the youngsters how to enter and exit the feeder, but they still prefer to have Dad drop their food directly into their mouths. The feeder is in our "bird tree" very close to our house, the background in this image is the potting shed. Backyard birds.