Figure 1 – Eastern Bluebird – Sialia sialis, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

On my commute to work Thursday morning I passed a little bush that was filled with Eastern Bluebirds – Sialia sialis feasting on red berries.  These little beauties are not really rare, but I have never seen them at my feeder and at that particular moment I wished that I had my camera with me and imagined standing in traffic snapping away happily.

Well, this Saturday morning I was rewarded or given a second chance.  We had had the first major significant snowstorm of the season and at around seven I had ventured out to make sure that the feeder was full since the birds were likely to be ravenous.  I was having coffee watching the feeder when to my delight a group of Eastern Bluebirds appeared.

I  grabbed my camera, fitted it with my big lens, turned the IS on and broke all of own self imposed rules.  1. I handheld the camera. 2. I photographed through a pane of glass.  Indeed, I wound up resting the lens against the window. And, in fact, one of the birds settled in a birch that was very close to me enabling the shot at 180 mm. I am pretty happy with the results of Figure 1.

Canon T2i EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens, IS on. ISO 1600, 1/400 sec at f/5.6 with +1 exposure compensation.