Female American Redstart

[wfooshee]

Not great shots, but a new bird for me. According to the habitat chart I found, these are migratory through here, not resident. Identifying gave me fits since I'm very new to this, and this is another case where the female is completely different from the male's coloration.

Nikon D7000, 70-300 VR, SB600 Speedlight

Available light, which wasn't much, heavily shaded on a cloudy day, and backlit at that. ISO 800, 1/250th shutter-priority at f:13.


Flash on this one.


This would have been the best one, but she decided to leave at the same instant I decided to click,,,,

[Mike T]

nice shots, could be a young male.

[wfooshee]

Yeah, I didn't see anything in what I was looking through about immature individuals, and the colors matched very well to what I saw with females. So that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Seriously, though, why do birds have to go through all this molting and color-shifting and stuff? How do they keep track of who's who amongst themselves? Some birds have no difference at all between the sexes, some have a tiny patch of different color somewhere, some look like completely different species, and then there's the ones that change during the year, or from first year to second to third. Wazzup wif all dat?

I'm starting to realize why I've always thought birding was for goofy people......