Some local fauna

While on my walk through our neighborhood two weeks ago, I was lamenting my inability to take decent photos of all of the beautiful birds I saw. Cardinals, blue jays, robins...all rapidly flew away upon my approach, and I unfortunately did not have the ability to lie in wait with my telephoto lens just hoping for a bird to appear. Turns out karma is a bitch, as in my visit to the Paxton campus I stumbled across two rather large birds!


The first was a turkey vulture...this fella below. I was about to walk into one of the rundown buildings when he came flying up, startling the both of us. Luckily he did not fly at me, but instead to a window on the other side of the building...but I still had to walk back around that corner of the building to get out. I gathered up my courage and walked around the corner, at which point he immediately took off. I managed to grab a quick shot of him flying away, as these birds are FAR prettier when flying than while sitting!

When I finished photographing the barn, I headed up to the main house (pictures of these buildings are in my previous post). Sitting right in the road was this lady!

I say lady because I was definitely getting some honks and stares (she was keeping an eye on me, as you can see in the photo above). I was told my someone on the grounds that there are a pair that have laid eggs, so she was being protective of her little ones. I know how nasty geese can be, so I kept my distance...the previous two shots were made using my telephoto lens, so I was a good 15 or so feet away the whole time.

I love watching the songbirds in our yard, but have yet to capture any good images. I think it may be time to install a bird feeder and sit in wait with my telephoto lens so I can capture some of them!