Critters including a Brave Goldfinch

My birdfeeder with camera is now improved and filmed a bird drama, which I’ll show in a moment. But first, here’s Charlie on his favorite chair.

Saturday Critters / Black and White

Charlie alternates between lounging in the chair and on the couch. He also has a dog bed on which he sits once in a while. He has a rug too, but he uses that for his toy collection.

Filtered Portrait for Caturday Art

As Lynn promised when she mounted the birdfeeder on Christmas, she returned yesterday with a friend who knows how to fix things. Huey brought a board and some tools so the feeder could be placed more effectively. 

They had barely walked in the door when a touch of snowflakes turned into a brief blizzard. This had not been forecast, so Lynn and I both checked our phones to see what the weather report said. “Snow will end in 18 minutes.”  So we chatted and the snow actually let up before that.

Huey got to work, mounting the birdfeeder so that its camera faced the trees. He attached a pole for the solar panel.

A little camera is housed at the back of the feeder. It has a wide angle lens, and it was impossible to face it so that it never gets sunstruck because north would be pointing at my neighbor’s deck and house, invading their privacy. I wanted my row of evergreen trees as the background, and I was surprised to see that the lens makes them look so small.

The camera produces videos, but I am able to advance them slowly and get screenshots. The following screenshots are from a video of a goldfinch at the feeder.

A goldfinch is a small bird, not nearly as big as a house finch. This one was peacefully feeding when another bird swooped in. You can see it in front of the pampas grass, blurred from its speed. 

The little goldfinch saw it and raised its wings to say, “No! Keep away.”

The interloper dropped close to the ground, and then flew back up toward the trees. For a moment, it looked like it was flying back to the feeder, but then it rose up in the air and flew away.

The finch turned back to the feeder and continued its meal.

I’ve often seen little confrontations of birds, but being able to slow down the video and observe their body language is very interesting.

First Day Hike of 2025

The tradition of group hikes on New Year's Day is a fairly recent one. It was first nationally publicized in 2012, although some organizations held the event before that. 

I’m not able to hike because I have an injured knee plus foot problems, but I decided to drop in on the event at Seven Bends State Park. I know some of the park rangers and volunteers, and I wanted to get outside and see some friendly faces.

North Fork of the Shenandoah 

New Gadgets and a Tufted Titmouse

My new birdfeeder camera takes photos with a very wide angle, giving them a fisheye effect. Add to that the distractions of the background, and I decided to crop the pictures rather drastically. (The background will improve when Lynn and her friend come and remount the camera.)

Advantages of this little camera include it being motion-activated and mounted on a birdfeeder. It captured some cute close-ups of this tufted titmouse.

In case you are wondering, the brand name of this item is Birdfy. I am still learning to use the app. 

After I cropped and then tried to edit down the distortion of the wide-angle lens, the images lost some of their sharpness. I find them amusing though. 

The third image is a photo taken the regular way. Fortunately, the tufted titmouse is not as shy as some birds, and does not fly off every time I move. I used my old Nikon for this one and it has a telephoto lens.

I took advantage of another newly-acquired item to get this image onto my iPad. It’s a camera card reader that has a connector that works with iPads and iPhones. Normally, I transfer SD cards to my laptop, but I have found it hard to use since having problems with my eyes. An advantage of the iPad is that I can easily move it closer so I don’t have to strain my eyes as much. Even with that they get tired quickly. I should probably rest my eyes a lot more. It’s hard to change old habits.

Sometimes You Have to Make Up Your Mind

🎵 “Did you ever have to finally decide?
And say yes to one and let the other one ride
There's so many changes and tears you must hide
Did you ever have to finally decide?”

~ The Lovin’ Spoonful, 1965

This first image is not a photo. It’s a computer-made picture representing what it’s like to pick one photograph out of the thousands that I took in 2024.

Photo of the Year

Charlie’s expression is basically how I feel about some things that happened this year. And his pictures always get a good response because he’s cute. His occasional posts are more popular than mine!

Charlie‘s presence has changed my life, not always for the better. His anxiety has been a huge problem for both of us. Medication did not help him so I’ve been trying to condition him without traumatizing him. He still has separation anxiety, although he doesn’t have the meltdown that he used to have. He still gets upset riding in the car. Right now, my car is at the dealership getting the seatbelts and armrests repaired where he chewed them in his nervousness. 

He came from an awful situation, a huge breeding facility that got shut down by the government because they did not treat the beagles well. I’m fairly certain that he was taken from his mother too early. Many of the Envigo beagles have anxiety.

He’s been with me for over two years and he’s done well in many ways. In other ways, it’s been baby steps all the way. 

For other photographers’ picks, see City Daily Photo. 

The Year 2024 Ends

And I Still Haven’t Picked a Photo of the Year.

Lynn and Peggy

Wordless Wednesday on Tuesday.

More Favorites from 2024

Post #8950

Today's batch of photos is from the first five months of 2024. I just went through the album of my blog posts from that time to select some contenders. It was my final book made by Blog2Print. Unfortunately, they are not printing blog albums anymore. I would love to find another publisher that does the same thing, including the text as well as pictures, and preferably the same height and width so that it would match my existing albums.

This first collage is not from the album. I made it using PhotoCollage.

Charlie is very cute, so of course some of his pictures are among my favorites. Here he is with my daughter Marie.

Here are other pictures that I decided to consider for photo of the year. I’ll post more tomorrow.

Seeking a Photo of the Year

Selecting my "Photo of the Year" is difficult because no particular image stands out in my mind. Here I've just selected some that I like from the last three months. Now I just have to go back through the rest of the year, and then narrow them down.

I have some pretty autumn scenes, many of them from Shenandoah National Park. 

I live in a beautiful region in Virginia, so I photograph scenery almost daily.  

I have some pictures of pets and people that I really like, although they’re not likely to rate as the year’s best.

Sunday Best / Mosaics

How would you go about picking a photo of the year?

Another Holiday Report

Thanks to Eileen's Saturday Critters linkup, I am motivated to post photos of animals every weekend. I'll turn this post over to Charlie in a second, but first I'll show you a group of deer that I saw along Skyline Drive.

Charlie, filtered for Caturday.

Charlie: “It was a busy week, even for a dog. Marie came and stayed a few days, and Lynn came for a celebration. Everyone had presents to open, even me.”

I took my new toys to the place where I keep my toys. The gray squirrel had a squeaker. I waited until after Lynn left, and then I tore it apart. I didn’t mean to kill it, but l needed to get rid of the squeaker because it was bothering my other animals.

On the day after Christmas, we got in Marie’s‘s car and I thought we were going to the dog park but instead we went to the kennel. I was very sad. I had to stay there for most of the day. At least I got to play with the nice ladies who take care of me there.

Today was quiet because everyone has left except Mom and me. So bye for now.