Things with wings

This is the nearest graveyard to my house and I walk through it a lot. Buried there are many of the well-to-do citizens of this town in the hundred years after it was established in the mid-1800s, and it includes a few pretty nice pieces of sculpture. It is called the "General Protestant Cemetery." Meant primarily for Methodists, there's a certain No-Show-Offs-Here tone to most of the graves. But this is the grave of the family of one of the prime ministers of Newfoundland (he himself, Robert Bond, is mentioned on the inscription but not actually buried there) and it projects an image of power and righteousness. It isn't the only angel in the GPC, but it is the biggest. He seems to be holding on to his sword, sheathed on his left side, so perhaps this is meant to be the Archangel Michael, ready to pull it out. This picture, taken in late April 2017, is on Fuji 200 film (expired in July 2002) shot in my Olympus 35DC. In cleaning up the spots on the negative, I noticed that the angel has lost two or three fingers; probably the stones of children who feared not. ----------------------------- EDIT, a few hours later: After looking at a picture of this angel I took in 1985 (!), taken from the other side, I see that in the angel's left hand is a horn, not a sword: that's Angel Gabriel, not Michael. Duhhh. And it isn't even the angel on the Bond grave, either! Double duhh. The Bond angel is carrying a basket, and looks very demure by comparison.

The pine siskins at our feeder are smaller than the snowbirds, the juncos, but they are more prone to putting up a fight.

This bird showed up today in the company of a male purple finch and I didn't have the camera at hand. When I got the camera, the purple finch was nowhere to be seen.

This starling is a good stretcher. Probably a good dancer. His friend is taking lessons.

It was between snow and rain this morning when the bluejays came by and they looked just a little more determined than usual.

I posted this picture this evening on that other F-named site and within ten minutes I had three friends telling me that it probably is not a female Hairy woodpecker but rather a female Downy woodpecker. That distinction is far too fine a difference for my poor-birder skills. I must assume my friends are right, since they are of one voice in this regard.

At lunch-time today we were home and I saw this guy darting around in the back yard. After a heavy rain over the weekend, the snow has pulled back somewhat and there is enough open ground now for birds other than the feeder-feeders. This is the first fox sparrow I've seen in months.

The sun wasn't long up when I took this picture in minus nine (Celcius) degrees. The goldfinches couldn't have been very warm but they seemed happy enough in the sun. And near the food.

The junco, "snowbird" is what my father always called it, is an under-rated bird. Most of the time it just looks drably grey and white. But some of them are a ruddy brown, and some seem to have an iridescence more like a starling. This is one of the thirty or so regular snowbirds outside my window.

Bluejays are the profligate takers-away of our local bird world. Peanuts, I suspect, are just entertainment for them. They pick them up and carry them somewhere, burying them under leaves or in the snow, and then come back for more. And more, and more. I don't know if they ever dig them out. The squirrels seem to. And no doubt the other rodents too. Juncos like peanuts too. They stay around to eat and will sometimes tear apart a peanut very carefully, eating a few bites at a time, guarding what's left over until it's all eaten. Chickadees are takers-away, too, but not for peanuts. They dash in to the feeder, grab a seed, and dash away to a quiet spot to patiently open it, chew it, and think about it. And then they dash back for another seed. Wonderfully polite and considerate. Pigeons come in like drunken pirates and swing on the feeders, spilling as much on the ground as they can and strut around when they are full, laughing at us.

Among my pets over the years were a snail, who escaped his tether overnight the first night I had him, and Wally the Wasp, who seemed to thrive under my care. Wally lived in my office from mid-summer until December 2004. I fed him mostly sugared water, though he was interested in a few other things like flower parts, too. He lived mainly under glass and, when he died, I moved him to a former candy-box for viewing. He's been there ever since.

My life seems lately to have gotten so that all I take pictures of is birds. It's the weather, which has been rotten. It keeps me from walking much. The storm the other day, a hurricane without a name, dashed this feeder to the ground. The bit of tape here was my quick fix to the broken bottom. After seeing this picture, methought I should turn the feeder around. Maybe so.

This was a couple of hours ago, while I was cooking supper. This Northern Flicker stayed for about ten minutes, filling himself on the suet. Flickers have long tongues and I took two dozen pictures of him, hoping to catch his tongue stuck out; every shot missed. I'll try again another time.

We have a little flock of goldfinches coming every day to our feeder. This was one this morning.

While I ate my breakfast this morning, this song sparrow was hanging around outside my window. The blue colour on the top of his beak is probably just reflection from the sunlit back wall of my house. You can also see a junco's tail hanging from the other side of the feeder. I had at hand my oldest digital camera, the Olympus E-P2, with its extremely compact Tokina 300mm "Reflex" lens. This about 50% of the original frame. This lens gets in close but is very soft. Pictures taken with it always need a lot of contrast adjustment, which is what this got before I posted it. I think I over-sharpened it, too; don't look too closely.

It's pretty busy at the feeder itself, so some birds do it buffet-fashion, grabbing something and taking it to a quiet spot to eat it. So this pine siskin with his sunflower seed.

I like how my long Olympus lens renders backgrounds. This was early afternoon but in mid-February the sun is pretty low; it had a warm tone to it. But there was a broad blue sky through much of the overhead, so the overall colour was a bit purplish.

This was a few days ago. It was pretty miserable weather, very cold, but the goldfinches discovered our cache of sunflower seeds. This is a small fragment of the original picture but, at that level of crop, digital starts to look like my true photographic love, expired film.