Photos from the DSLR... 5/28/20

DJ here. So not a lot of new bird info today... Bird & Birdlet still stopping by for meals from me, didn't see Tawny today so maybe yesterday was his last visit here. Birdlet still eating light and taking baths all day so that strikes me as vacation mode and not egg-laying mode. They may have put reproduction on the back burner after the failure of the Cuties nesting. I still expect at least one more batch this year, but who knows...

red-whiskered bulbul shot yesterday

I did unexpectedly make friends with a baby red-vented bulbul today, which has been fed by its parents nearby, they have scavenged some of the dropped mealworms and have picked fights with the shamas. But having the baby decide to approach me for food was unexpected, since it's, like, not something a baby bird should do. But it did, and I actually had it sitting on my finger chowing down for about 15 minutes while I talked to it. Again, surprising, since its parents don't trust me and weren't to be seen. But I expect it'll remember me fondly and perhaps within a week it'll have a human-designated name and be insinuating itself into the bird-ape ecosystem. They really aren't as pretty as the other species but they have a lot of personality and talk a lot.

here's the mated pair, shot from my door as they checked me out

this guy has been dashing to our porch and inside briefly

While the baby was on my finger, one of the red-whiskered bulbuls, much smaller and more delicate birds, flew up in front of me and seemed to almost be expecting a turn at what the baby red-vented was having. Which is surprising, too, since those are very shy birds... though they have gotten used to me somewhat in the last couple weeks, they used to light out at the sight of a human. Now they associated me with leftover mealworms and are used to me talking and moving in close proximity to them... and yeah, I actually introduce a lot of sound and movement into my interactions to get them used to the fact I do that, I don't want to have to be a silent statue for them to come around. This isn't something I read anywhere, just comes from being a quasi-autistic little kid who grew up around critters.

this is the mom of the baby bulbul, I have a shot of the baby too but for some reason it won't upload

Anyhow, the reason for posting today is that since I never did wake up all that much today, I pulled the SD card from the DSLR I use to shoot portraits of the birds... a different and more unwieldy camera than the superzoom I normally shoot snaps and vids with. But it has better optics and better imaging chip... so I'll post a few pix here... click them to see them at "full" size... they're downsized a lot from full resolution so they'll load fast but are all at least 1600px wide when you click on them, if your screen will handle that.

Cheers