Bluebird Fledgling

About 8AM yesterday my wife alerted me to a visitor at the backdoor. Around the corner of the house, next to the edge of our deck is a Bluebird house. The couple laid 5 eggs in there back in late April, and we've been tracking the babies' progress, so we knew it was close to fledging time. Two years ago we had one pop unto the deck first before taking off for the tree line, accompanied by Mom & Dad. So we weren't surprised to see one on the deck yesterday morning. I had to laugh, though, because instead of looking for its parents right away it seemed intent on staring inside at us. I told my wife it was payback for all the times they saw her staring in at them through the hole. LOL

After 10 minutes the little one hopped across the deck and took up residence on a deck rail for about two hours before disappearing while we weren't watching. We're not sure if it was the first one out and it stood guard as a distraction while its siblings fledged, or if it was the last, but after it left the deck we checked the box and it was empty. Gotta love when nature comes to you and says, "Hey!! Look at me!!" You also have to love the little tufts of fuzz on the sides of its head - looks a bit like a Mad Scientist.

"Hey, you in there!!"




Getting Your Tail Wet



Keeping An Eye Out For Mom & Dad




Not Quite Ready To Jump




"Are You Still Watching?!"

nice Jake, hes looking to you for some food

Not likely. We're out of mealworms. LOL

BTW, if you're wondering how the D600 does with high ISO, the first two photos are ISO 2500, the third is ISO 3200, and the last two are at ISO 1600. I used Nik's Dfine noise reduction tool and then added sharpening, but to be honest, it wasn't bad at all.

Here is the preprocessed ISO 3200 shot with only cropping and lens correction applied.



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One other thing I noticed is that my D600 was backfocusing with the Sigma 150-500mm when shooting through the viewfinder. Switched to LiveView and it nailed the focus. Need to play with that.

The ones in our box left last night as well. But in my case mommy and daddy kept buzzing me when I went out on the deck. I think they may have been in the bushes under it.

Mom & Dad have gotten used to us, but we try to steer clear during fledging. The first two were shot through the door glass. The other 3 through the open door. We have a gazebo on the deck that blocks the view of the backdoor as well, so we weren't visible to the parents.

Superb sequence Jake!! Great shots and the captions just add to it!

Pat in NH