Somehow we managed to skip right over making a new thread for September. I surmise it was from watching the hurricanes.
Since it's October, I decided to start a new thread. Of course, it helps that I have a brand new photo I took today of a bird I have never gotten a photo of before.
We came from here:
The thread "Bird Photos - August 2017" in Gardening for Butterflies, Birds and Bees forum

This is a red eyed vireo. I'm 99.9% positive of that ID anyway. If anyone thinks I'm wrong, please speak up. Poor baby flew into my kitchen window HARD. I ran out to check on it & it was just sitting there stunned. I took a couple photos. Thankfully it recovered & flew off!

Oh that's so pretty Ann

Thanks Ronnie!

Just an undulating curtain of birds...don't know what they were, but there sure were a lot of them!

Here are a couple of Great Blue Heron flight sequences (by our little buddy JR) taken Tuesday (3 October):


And later:

Wowser Dirt! That's a passel of birds!

Robert - Beautiful!!! Love those Great Blue's!

Love the herons! Dirt, those may be starlings if you get those in your area, they are known for their spectacular evening dance. Search 'starling murmuration music' for some gorgeous clips.

That's it Deb!
and what an awesome new word
murmuration!

it was like a school of fish swimming in the sky and I kept waiting for a sky shark to show up and start picking them off--
great watching those amazing clips--now I gotta get back to work!
shoulda tried to film it, but, I don't really know how to do that

As you know, we all have to eat. And that goes for our heron friend, JR. But, the other day, he did it up in style with a three course meal.
First, there was the (insect) appetizer and a drink:

Followed by the salad course:


Finally. the main course, trout:



He skipped desert.

A bit quiet on the thread, so I'll toss in some young Mallard images taken on Tuesday.
First, a closeup of a young drake, followed by some wing flapping:

Then a pair of drakes on different pages of the script:
Here's a couple for the duck butt fans:
Finally, the folks at Cornell say that Mallards are dabbers, not divers. But, as is often the case, the Little Lehigh Mallards apparently didn't get the memo:

marsrover said:

This is quite a stunning picture. And I love how you've captured the splashing water with that extremely fast shutter speed. Very nice.

joannakat said:

This is quite a stunning picture. And I love how you've captured the splashing water with that extremely fast shutter speed. Very nice.

Thanks for your comment. I recently watched a video from a B&H seminar by a professional photographer who used high ISO and fast shutter speed settings. I decided to give it a try. I now use an ISO of 2500. It really seems to help with ducks as the have a very fast wing speed. The shutter speed for the image you showed was 1/6400 sec. The splash shots were taken as fast as 1/8000 sec. It is a different world from when I was shooting film decades ago.

Liking the narrative too!

Wrens

Oh my these pics are gorgeous!! I'm new to the site, forum and thread and am amazed with the knowledge and beautiful images you all provide! How fun and fabulous!
I seem to only get sparrows, blue jays, yellow finches and cardinals at my feeders. But my pics turn out rotten. Any advice?

Warm welcome from the Pacific NW, Beth! I've tried different types of seed in my feeders, but have largely opted to just get the least expensive generic mix for my tube feeders and cracked corn for my open ones. The birds that eat directly from the feeders tend to kick the millet out to the ground, but then I get ground feeding birds that seem to like that, so it all gets eaten. How lucky that you get cardinals, so pretty.

The cardinal is our state bird! They are all over the place

Ours is the goldfinch, but their numbers have really declined from when I was a child. I still see them now and again, but not nearly as often.

@Midwestbeth! I love your avatar too! She's like a cashmere chicken!

Our state bird is the Black-capped Chickadee, which is also one of my favorite birds. Unfortunately, I had to take my feeder down because the spill invited too many chipmunks who then tunnelled all over my little garden area. Animals will go where the buffet is! So I haven't seen a Chickadee in quite some time. I hope to be able to put it back up next year when I put a patio in.

Last Friday, the weather was great (sunny, cool, and low humidity), so I grabbed the Nikons and headed for the Lehigh Parkway. Despite high hopes, by the time I reached my regular turn point, I had only a few duck images. For some reason, I decided to press on and continue as far as the Indian Museum. About a hundred yards short of the museum bridge, there in the stream was JR:
He was in a very cooperative mood, moving around, including several short flights. The session lasted for over an hour. That resulted in a number of images/sequences (way too many to put in a post) which I have placed in a Dropbox file which can be seen using the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ygt...
After taking a lot of images, I moved to the nearby bridge for a different perspective when, whoosh, Nelly flew by and took JR with her, downstream and out of sight:

After a few minutes, Nelly returned alone, and set down for a bit upstream of the bridge:
She paused briefly, but in character, quickly headed upstream:

Time to head home. Did get images of a fisherman and two riders on the way.

Not a bad day.