Challenge Yourself

posted in: Birds | 0

Nothing lifts your spirits more in winter than to look out the window and see the gorgeous red cardinal.

The brilliant red of the male stands out on the snowy covered trees.  Red is not a colour that I have in my wardrobe but I love the red male cardinals.  Seeing the cardinals always makes me grab the camera and take lots of photos.  I’ve yet to capture that one photo that is worthy of farming, but I keep trying.

One of the challenges I’ve set for myself over the past couple of years is to organize all my photos into folders by subject.  For example the Birds folder has all the birds listed by name that we’ve seen and photographed.  It’s sort of like my life list of birds.  Each sub folder as yearly folders, and each yearly folder has a monthly one.  It sure makes it easy to find photos of a specific topic like the cardinals.  It’s an ongoing process made easier when I do each set of photos when uploaded to the computer.  Now I just have to get comfortable with deleting multiple copies and ones that aren’t so clear.

Cardinals mainly feed on the ground or the flat feeder but they can be tempted to other feeders by adding seed that they like.  One of the feeders if full of safflower just for them.

Cardinals at craftygardener.ca

The female cardinal is just as gorgeous as the male.  At first her colouring looks to be a bit drab but looking closer you can see the red on her head and the red in her wings.

Cardinals at craftygardener.ca

I set a challenge a year or so ago to capture birds in flight more.  The top left cardinal photo shows the male approaching the feeder with its wings spread out.  I haven’t captured a better photo of the cardinal in flight but I’ve managed to get some good ones of gulls, ducks, swans and geese on our walks down by the bay.

birds in flight at craftygardener.ca

I can still remember the first day we saw a cardinal in the backyard all those years ago.  He kept coming to the back window and looking in.  It would fly up and down the window and then perch again on the ledge.  This photo, taken in the early summer of 1999,  was in the days before I had digital cameras so it isn’t as good as it could be.  But at least I got a photo of him wondering if the reflection he saw was a threat to his territory.

cardinal at the window at craftygardener.ca

It was a challenge to look back through the old photos, find the one I wanted, scan it, and crop it.  While doing that I came across all sorts of memories from what the garden looked like, to camping trips in the tent trailer, to wondering who were those thin people in the photos (surely we haven’t put on that much weight!).  So now I have another challenge to scan some of those old photos and save them to the computer in my filing system.

I’m sharing with ABC Wednesday where letter of the week is C.  C for cardinals and challenges.

Do you set challenges for yourself?

 I’m also sharing with Wild Bird WednesdayI’d Rather B Birdin’ and Saturday’s Critters.

spruceline2a

lots more lens friends

birds in the garden … critters in the garden … water birds

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