Male belted kingfisher

[birdographer]

These birds are quite difficult to photograph since they rarely sit still for longer than a second! Small shot due to major cropping.

[Diamond_Dog]

1. Handsome bird! Well done!

[birdographer]

3. Thanks!

[AndyS]

2. I've noticed that the smaller the bird the more it moves.

Large raptors, egrets and herons are petty easy as they move slowly and I have time to anticipate what happens next. As the size and inertia decrease the energy and motion increase. A black capped chickadee is never in one place for more than half a second and they don't even obey the law of gravity; as likely to land on the bottom of the branch as the top. Guess that's why the engineers developed burst mode! Spray and pray as it were and then spend more time discarding the mostly empty frames than actually taking pictures!

Oh, forgot to mention, excellent picture. The slightly open beak gives a sense of anticipation to the pose.

[birdographer]

4. Exactly

I tend much more toward long-legged shorebirds, but this was quite a catch. These little guys make a chipping noise as they zoom over water, and then disappear into trees. Frustration on wings for a photographer!

[marble falls]

5. Male belted kingfisher. But what did the Kingfisher do to the male first?

[ret5hd]

8. Mocked his hairdo?

[niyad]

6. Way cool!

[Cracklin Charlie]

7. I noticed your name.

I’ve been trying to identify a little bird that I saw several years ago. So far, I’m coming up empty.

Wanna give it a go?

It was a really hot day in NW Missouri. I saw a little bird sitting in my ficus tree on the deck for a long time. A closer look revealed a cute little black bird, possibly juvenile, black all over, with a bright red spot on each “cheek”. That was the only coloring that I could see. He sat there for a long time, I turned on a sprinkler, so he could get water. About an hour later, he was gone.

I’ve been trying to identify him for at least 10 years. I’ve tried woodpeckers, blackbirds, wrens, and sparrows. I would love to know what it was.

[birdographer]

12. No idea!

Wish I could help, you'd almost have to go through a bird book page by page for US birds. The problem is the possibility of being a juvenile. they change a lot sometimes as they mature.

The name comes from photographing birds, not so much identifying. Sorry I'm no help!

[Beastly Boy]

9. Not that Iam disappointed, but after reading the header, I was expecting something along these lines

Sometimes, being wrong is pretty gratifying.

[birdographer]

13. Ooops

I didn't expect much attention to this post except from birders who spotted it in the Photography group. I probably should have left the "male" off, it's a bit misleading in a subject...

[Beastly Boy]

16. No, your header is perfect. Keeps people guessing. That's half the fun.

[AllaN01Bear]

10. lovely shot of a lovely bird . eggscllent.

[scarytomcat]

11. beautiful bird and shot

thanks

[2naSalit]

14. They really are hard to capturein a still...

I have many failed attempts to claim. Very nice.

[BobTheSubgenius]

15. We don't have birds quite that exotic, but we sure enjoy the ones we do have.

And it's quite a variety. Wrens, swallows, chickadees, a small variety of woodpeckers, hummingbirds, common redpolls, and sparrows, all of whom feed here. We have these wild evergreen shrubs that are quite attractive, rather like rhodos, but smaller leaves and tiny, almost insignificant flowers.

There is a small "grove" of them, into which we've placed a big, shallow bowl that we keep full of clean water, and a "gnome home", where some of them are nesting. It's nice to watch them flit around in their own little "forest." It's quite safe, at least as safe as small birds can be in the "wild" and they are obviously very happy there.

Of course there are crows, and they are their own form of entertainment. Our Cairn just HATES them and goes into a frenzy at times. A couple of the crows seem to make it their business to annoy him, flitting back and forth diagonally at random intervals, sitting safely on either side or back fence and watching Ozzie.

A couple of times, we've seen one of them breaking off twigs and "throwing" them at him by whipping his head in an arc and letting go of the twig. That is particularly annoying to the dog.

The other day, one of them might have "one-punched" a squirrel into its "grave" by swooping down from one of the trees and giving it one mighty peck on the head with its momentum behind it for getting too close to the nest. It fell onto the other side of the fence into densish foliage and we lost sight of it.

It's our own little Wild Kingdom.

[George McGovern]

17. Beautiful birdographer! Even with the cropping! Excellent composition!