Oak Titmouse, Baeolophus inornatus
Oak Titmouse, 7/5/08, my yard, Stanford campus
Oak Titmouse, 5/24/08, my yard, Stanford campus
Oak Titmouse, gathering nest material, 3/13/04, Frenchman's Meadow, Stanford campus
These little birds, formerly known by the eminently descriptive name of Plain Titmouse, are regulars at our backyard feeders, and probably nest in or very near our yard. We hear their chickadee-like calls all year round, and their persistent and variable song, often a repeated two-note pattern, starts to be heard in January and is prominent by mid-February with the coming of the early California spring. Left, one gathers nest material.
Oak Titmouse, 0/3/08, Russian River, Healdsburg, Sonoma Co
Oak Titmouse, 9/3/08, Russian River, Healdsburg, Sonoma Co
Oak Titmouse, leaving nest, 3/13/09, Frenchman's Park, Stanford campus
Above, a bird leaves a nest in the process of being excavated, carrying wood fiber in its mouth. Below, this bird's nest was inside the larger hole at the bottom left of the picture.
Oak Titmouse, at nest, 5/14/05, Arastradero Preserve
Oak Titmouse, 2/22/04, my back yard, Stanford campus
Photography of small birds is sometimes thought to require the very heavy and expensive 500 or 600mm lenses, which do indeed produce many of the best bird pictures. But you can get acceptable bird photos with a smaller and more affordable lens, and without taking extreme pains to get close to the bird. The photo posted here is a crop representing only about 4% of the original 6 megapixel image, which can be seen (full-size and unedited, but compressed for Web display) here. I took it handheld from my back door across the back yard with my first DSLR camera, a Canon 300D Rebel, and my first serious bird lens, a Canon 300/4 with 1.4x teleconverter.
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