Cardinal Pair out my window

[Jaedon]

This morning I was awakened to the peeping of the resident Cardinal pair that lives in our neighborhood. It seems they had quite the brood this year as the parent pair were on the feeder along with 3 immature females and a pair of immature males just getting their bright red plumage. Here is the shots I got of mommy and daddy. Somehow I accidentally turned off the selection dial on my camera so with limited adjustability this morning during the shoot I managed to get it to ISO 400 and 1/50th while resting the camera on the windowsill. Very noisy shots but now I know their routine and I plan on getting them and the family asap with a mush less noisy setting next time.

[Cassie1]

Those male Cardinals are so colourful, looking forward to some more shots of them from you.

Cassie.

[Knight]

What i would give to see a pair like that, Well captured

[Jaedon]

Thank you for the comments. Here are a few more from later on in the day. The conditions improved slightly allowing me to turn down the ISO to 200 instead of 400. But they are still shot at 1/40th hand held with my 500mm (occasionally resting it on the window sill for steadying) All are shot at F8....it seems to be the best aperture setting for my lens.

I've got a remote trigger for my flash coming for xmas now so in the new year I am going to try and mount a flash closer to where they are sitting for days like these.

The females were much more shy in the afternoon... but it may have been because of the 3 different males shown below all sitting around the food source lol.

[Cassie1]

Nice shots Jaedon.


Cassie.

[Jaedon]

Thanks Cassie. I appreciate you taking the time to comment.

Here's the last 2 I promise. Finally got the 2 of them in good light. Now I need to male to leave the feeder long enough for me to get a decent shot with now "hand of Man" in the shot.

[agtaylor]

Nice, like # three with all the water droplets.

[Jaedon]

Thanks AGTaylor. I liked that one the best too. Yesterday we had a power failure here for about 6 hours so I took the time to go out and prune the dead branches that you can see in the foreground of that shot. Net time he sits there there will be less distractions lol.

[Cassie1]

Two more great shots Jaedon, I love that female Cardinal shot, she looks like a little punk with her feathers stuck up like that

Cassie.

[Loupey]

I like the shot of the female in the original post.

Thanks for sharing these.

[Jaedon]

Thanks Loupey. I liked that one too but the fence in the background bugs me. I haven't seen much of them since Saturday after the snow blew in over night.