Birding
Initial Draft: January 19, 2025
In mid-2024, a good friend ordered me a Bird Buddy. It's a goofy internet-of-things device, this little camera hooked to a small bird feeder which automatically takes pictures of whatever little flying goofballs decide to grab a snak from it. I didn't set it up for a month, mostly because the first camera it came with refused to charge, but after a quick return-and-replacement I re-discovered my love of birding.
I can't say I have the best equipment in the game but I love the pictures I manage to get. Of course I have that Bird Buddy feeder, it gets me all the close-ups I could ever ask for. My camera for handheld shots is a Pentax K-1 Mark II Silver paired with their 150-450mm telephoto lens, sometimes I remember to put it all on a tripod. It's a nice little mix! Some days I wish I had some more zoom, getting pictures of the little guys way down in the yard would be nice, but I can't complain too much when everyone seems to enjoy what I manage to take.
Due to where I live, the usual suspects are the following: Crows, Ravens, Blue Jays, Tufted Titmice, Northern Cardinals, Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers, Mourning Doves, Dark-Eyed Juncos, House and Tree and White-throated Sparrows, Goldfinches, Black-capped Chickadees, Mockingbirds, Winter Wrens, Bald Eagles, Red-shouldered and Red-tailed Hawks, Peregrine Falcons, and Killdeer. It's a nice mix! I hope as time goes on to get pictures of any and all of those birds, plus others which fly around. If I go a bit north I know I'll find lots of gulls, at some point of the year we have tons of Turkey Buzzards, we also just have a ton of turkeys...
My favorite birds are definitely the Juncos. They're the cutest little things, these little white-bellied things that hop around all silly and sound pretty. I always know winter is coming when they start coming up by the house, they prefer the woods in the summer but start coming out as the days get colder, and it's neat how you see the same thirty or so birds every year since they don't move all too much.
