As I type this, I can hear the finches from around my feeder.  Their song  is so beautiful to hear.  I am slowly becoming a birder.  Their variety in size, shape, color, and traits make them fascinating to observe.  I seek to find new ones on vacation, identify them, read about them, and capture them on film. Yet, birds are elusive which draws them to me even more.  They are not always easy to spot as they blend in with their surroundings.  They fly at great heights, and they usually avoid people. 

I love to capture photographs of birds, especially in flight, but their elevation and wing speed often renders a blurry image.  That's why I am learning more about how to control shutter speed for moving objects and why I just purchased a 300mm with a 1.4x teleconverter.  You can see more than with just the eye. 

In fact, using 1,000 frame-per-second video cameras, researchers recently analyzed the graceful aerial turns of hummingbirds. They saw that it's something like tuning a row boat: you row harder on one side.  For a hummingbird to turn left, all it has to do is flap its right wing a little bit harder than the left wing. To end the turn, it simply returns to flapping its wings in unison.  Scientists confirmed this simple turning mechanism in everything that flies - birds, bats, and bugs.  

The following is a list of birds that I am using to organize my bird photographs.  I have just started this endeavor, so I have only a few entries.