Snow Day with Black Rosies

Well, today was yet another snow day; I’d say we got at least six inches of snow; perhaps a lot more…it melts fast this time of year. It began snowing before I went to bed last night till afternoon today, and yet by three o'clock the sun was shining and it was about forty degrees outside. Lovely day, but not for driving; I missed work.

While I did spend several hours working online, I also spent several hours sitting at my back door trying to take pictures of something I’ve never seen. I was walking past my kitchen window when I saw about eight or ten Rosy Finches in a new flat feeder! One was very, very dark. These birds are some of the most skittish birds I’ve watched; even worse than Red-winged Blackbirds…they’ll fly at any movement from inside my house.

So of course, I went right out and spread seed outside the glass backdoor, moved the bird netting aside and sat on the floor for about an hour. Unfortunately, this old house has a very old, glass-paned door…double-paned for Colorado winters. And of course the seal is broken and the panes are no longer clean on the inside. Lordy, I do have a time getting pictures of birds!

And what is the deal with this digital camera; why is it that it doesn’t just take a picture when I press the darn button…it goes through some sort of internal gyration and by the time it actually snaps the shot…the bird has moved and is no longer in the position I tried for. Perhaps I also need camera lessons, too.

The male Black Rosy is a stunning bird this time of year (breeding season); quite dark with shockingly pink-neon wing coverts. They have sooty foreheads like the others, and a gray crown to the back, though not so much as the Grays. The heads of the Gray Crowned Rosy reminds me of a very old black man with a seriously receding hairline; dark forehead, surrounded ‘ear to ear’ with gray cotton. I finally figured out how to tell them from the Brown-caps…which really have little gray behind their black foreheads.

I have another question. I understand most people like photos which are NOT ‘Photoshopped’… are the best photographs also not cropped? I crop like mad; it is the only way to get a ‘close-up’ of a bird. I take large-format pictures…and then crop to fit, so to speak. I wonder if that makes me a wannabe.

At any rate, I did get a few almost passable shots; there were all three Rosies here today: Gray-crowned, Brown-capped, and Black. I feel blessed. I’ll tell ya, I wannabe as good as Bill Schmoker some day; take a look at his Rosy-finches here.