Sunday, April 12, 2009

Northern Cardinal

Photos of Northern Cardinals are perpetually good sellers. No surprise, this a beautiful and familiar bird to people across much of North America. I photographed these in central Texas yesterday, using a 1DsIII with a 500/4IS lens & 2x convertor. I chose to use this camera body over the 50D because I was working at fairly close range with birds landing on predictable perches (so I could prefocus). In low light - like these were shot in - the file quality of the 1DsIII appears much better than the 50D.

I sat virtually motionless on the ground near the feeding station for 6 hours to get these and several other species that were coming in. Unfortunately at the end of the day I found a tick crawling up my shorts and thankfully removed it before it had a chance to embed itself. While I admire the survival adaptations of ticks, I prefer not to be the parisitized host!

Northern Cardinal (male)

Northern Cardinal (female)

3 comments:

  1. Yikes re: tick. Happy to read that you found and removed it! Many years ago, a friend of mine ended up in the hospital for quite awhile, extremely ill with Lyme disease after a camping trip.

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  2. felicidades por este estupendo blog, lugares y pájaros increibles, saludos desde España

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  3. Anonymous9:35 AM

    YIKES re: the tick, Ethan!
    The cardinals are beautiful.

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