17 May 2010

Red Cheeked Starlings in the cherry blossoms





Some male Red Cheeked Starlings in Goryokaku Park.

I spent the last couple of mornings watching a small colony of Red Cheeked Starlings in a very handy location in the main park in town and despite the crowds I got some nice pictures.............











The cherry blossoms were rather late this year and perhaps in most springs this scene doesn't happen so often...............










As you can see the females are a little dull by comparison but they still have their charms............










But most of the time I was concentrating on the males......










I took lots of shots..................................occasionally they did something a little interesting.........




They were nestbuilding...............







A very photogenic bird you have to admit..................













My wife had found the tree with these Starlings on Saturday. We could stand on the old ramparts (the park used to be a fort) and look at the tree top at more or less eye level.

On the day my wife found them there were lots of White-eyes in the park but by the time I got there on Sunday most had gone and I didn't get any shots. 

This morning I was very surprised to see 3 Grey Tailed Tattlers in the park flying around the moat looking for somewhere to land................I couldn't get a photo of them though.




The light was very good, the sun was behind me and I was down at ISO 200 or even 100 most of the time.







When they left the trees I couldn't afford such luxuries.........




Thanks for clicking this link.

人気ブログランキングへ

The last post's pics may look a little odd because I forgot to change the colour profile to sRGB. On some browsers/monitors the colours will appear dull and washed out.............I'm a tad lazy and I can't be a***d to go back and change it now..................



8 comments:

  1. Hi Stu,
    What a set man.... A beautiful bird taken in a beautiful environment.. I love the one of Hide-and-seek type! Gorgeous!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Collaboration of Red Cheeked Starlings and "Sakura" is very beautiful!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great set of pics Stu. I think you should sell some of those to the Valentine's Day card companies. I'm sure they would snap them up!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ayyayoye! WEhat a great serie, the second image is wonderfull and veru "cute" Great bird, great image...congrats ;)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Great series of pictures in the blossom that really sets off the birds. What an attractive starling that is, a new one on me.

    ReplyDelete
  6. WOW WOW WOW
    These shots are just excellent!!!
    The lighting is perfect and the colours are just lovely.
    Wish I could be in Hokkaido.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thanks for the comments everyone, I was pretty pleased with these shots, in a week or so the tree will be covered with greenery with the birds hiding inside............

    ReplyDelete
  8. Birds amongst blossom - can't get much better! I'm hoping to get some shots like this in the coming spring. A bullfinch would be my top blossom bird (if they haven't eaten all the buds!) :)

    ReplyDelete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...