Song birds in my back yard

I got a few song bird photos when I got home from work on friday, June 17. As soon as I walked in the door I sat down behind my camera when I seen a bluejay perch right outside the window. After that I seen this sparrow chuck with it's mother, then a cardinal. So the back yard is working out pretty well for song birds.

The Weekend

This past weekend I just had to get out and take photos. Saturday did not work out so well, we got to such a late start. One thing lead to another and by the time we got on the road it was around 6:30 in the evening. I like to start around 5:00, But we did end up having a nice drive, Sunday we started earlier and first I thought we would check Morton terminal area for deer. I decided to do one drive through and if we see nothing we will go somewhere else and that's what happened, I know if we had stuck around there they would turn up, but I kinda wanted to do something else for a change. So while we were just about to leave that area I thought would go on the other side of that bush, down off of Sprucewood Dr. and seen a railroad crossing that I thought was kinda neat because it did not have any railroad crossing arms or lights. So I took a photo of that,

Then we headed straight up Front road and through Amherstburg Ontario, and decided to go to holiday Beach. We have not been there since last year and it was a free pass day so we said why not. We drove around  and then went to the hawk tower and there was absolutely nothing around. It was cold that day and cloudy and I thought I would look around from the top of the hawk tower and still seen nothing.Wow, Last year at this time there were butterflies, dragonflies, frogs, toads, snakes, blue heron and so on, but today nothing. So we decided to take a walk around the pond and as we walked we could here this loud bird like noise I never heard before. As we got closer it moved further away but I did take a few shots of it, it was a Common Gallinule and had  very bright orange and yellow legs and beak,

 

As I was ready to give up on this bird and start walking I noticed this munching sound right behind me like something was eating lettuce or something, so I turned around and took one step over and right in front of me was this Muskrat one foot away from me. So I tried to take a photo with the lens I had on the camera but the light was to low for hand held so I walked back over to were my tripod was and changed lenses, the tripod would have been to high up and I did not have time or did I want to scare it off so I walked back over and laid on the ground and he was only 2 feet in front of me , Michele came over and took a few shots with her camera and this thing did not even care, it just kept eating the tall grass as we took photos,

I have heard that they are vicious fighters and have been known to attack humans without provocation. But he was looking right at me and did not even run away.

So of course to end the day I just had to get another sunset photo and it come out pretty cool.

There are still quite a few deer out there. The males antlers are starting to grow out, they are feeding all of the time. I have been trying to get close to them and I have but, the ticks are insane! Friday after work I thought I would walk through a field were I had seen some deer grazing, on the south side of Broadway, west of the dog park. There was an old trail were the grass was low and I walked for about 10 minutes until I got close, one buck actually started to approach me out of curiosity. then I turned back, I don't want to stress them at all. I actually like non stressed natural photos. So I was out there for about 45 minutes and Michele and Nick had went up southward from the hydro tower and back approx. 10 minutes. when we were all got back at the car we found a tick on Michele, we just brushed that one off. later we went home and I had some work I wanted to do fixing my fence and by the time I had come in I needed to go to bed and totally forgot to check for ticks, we were so tired. And wow the next day I had one on my back and one on my stomach and she had one on her back and on her leg, I had to remove them with tweezers. Nick had none. We both started taking antibiotics that day, I'd rather not wait for the flu like symptoms they say to wait for before going to a hospital and they prescribe antibiotics anyway for Lyme Disease. That night before going to bed I thought I would check the bed, so I went through all the sheets and sure thing I found one. That's the price you pay for not doing a tick check when getting home and I knew this. But I never said wildlife photography was easy either. The next couple of days I just stayed on the road like before. It's  alittle more diffacult with all the vegatation, getting a clear shot.