Encouragement

I was privileged to witness the fledging of a brood of Western Bluebirds last week. I'd been watching them every morning for some time and noticed a change in the parents feeding behavior that led me to suspect that Friday might be the day. We had heavy fog in the morning, but it started to thin a little around 10:00, so I set up my camera within range of the box (it's in the back yard and this is the parent's second brood this year, so they're pretty used to me). About 10:30 one of the juveniles from first brood showed up and perched on top of the box for awhile with the new brood looking upward at the roof. The older juvenile then flew to a small oak tree about ten feet behind the box and started making a twittering noise that I had not heard from Bluebirds before. I took some shots of it and then refocused on the box in hopes that this signaled fledging. At that point the adult male showed up and started hovering two or three feet off the ground and several feet to one side of the box. This drew my attention (and presumably that of any predators) and suddenly the second brood emerged in very quick succession. I managed to catch the last one on the threshold and a blurred and clipped flight shot and they were gone. Next time I'll know to ignore the male (but he was sure a sight!). This image is the older juvenile calling out the new brood. I liked the framing of the oak leaves, so I left the crop quite loose.

1Div, 500mm f4 ISL + 1.4TC, Black Widow on RRS legs, f8, 1/320, Av mode with +1/3 stop (compensating for the bright cloud bg which disappeared and required reducing the exposure 2/3 stop in post processing), iso 800. Processed in CS6 and cropped to 9.5MP. Taken July 9th at 10:43 am under brightening skies.

Your comments and criticisms are most earnestly solicited.

Thanks for looking,