Photographing the birds required a bit of patience on my part as well as anticipation by pressing the shutter halfway on my camera. I learned this after deleting some 50 photos I shot of the bird feeder with no bird in the image. :-) Some birds let you approach and get very, very close while others took off the minute you stepped out of the house. When I spotted a woodpecker at one of the bird feeders, my only option to photograph it was to shoot from inside the house and through the glass pane of the door. Had I been shooting film and not digital, I would have gone through rolls and rolls of film before managing to capture one photo of the woodpecker. Instead, digital helped me to quickly eliminate all those missed opportunities and get SOMETHING. Though I'm not at all satisfied with the woodpecker photos I took through the glass, I wanted to show you what I did manage to get:

What's funny about this strip I put together is the very last one, where the woodpecker is looking directly at me as if to say will you STOP already?!? I'll not tell you how many times the words shit and fuck flew out of my mouth, I'll let you guess. I knew when I missed shots, I knew when I wasn't paying close enough attention and when I didn't anticipate the eat-and-fly routine of the birds. I have no idea what I'll do with all those damned photos of birds now and ponder the continuation of this ridiculous pursuit I created. That is, of course, until I return and come across yet another type of bird I've yet to photograph. Next time I'll bring along my film camera with the zoom lens. :-)

One more thing. While in the midst of photographing the birds, I was standing underneath the feeder that hung from a tree waiting for the feathered to return when I heard a rustling behind me. When I turned my head to see what it was, I saw the biggest buck (an adult male deer) with HUGE antlers that easily could have been mistaken for an elk, it was that grand. The afternoon sunlight caught the splendid creature in such a way that left me momentarily spellbound. Even though I had camera in hand and at the ready I didn't react fast enough. As quickly as the deer appeared in my own viewfinder, it swiftly disappeared from my sight. *sigh* I was so taken with the vision that when I attempted to tell friends what I saw, getting the words out of my mouth became difficult. For some strange reason the only name I could come up with for the animal was reindeer when what I saw was what it was, a deer or very large buck. I've no idea where reindeer came from in the depths of my brain, but thankfully I didn't actually say that. Were it not for someone mentioning the same exact sighting but elsewhere, I would have questioned whether or not I really saw what I thought I saw. And no, I wasn't clocked on the head by the bird feeder (chuckle.) Oh well. That concludes this episode of bird tales -- feathered, fleet-footed and female. *wink*