Comedy at the bird feeder!
From Wildlife Photographer Dan Jordan
Have you heard? Bird is the word! Of course, this is a reference to the lyrics of a song from 1963 called Surfin’ Bird, by the Trashmen. Peter Griffin from Family Guy (Season 7) probably made the lyric more famous than the original with his quirky repetitive rendition of the “Bird, Bird, Bird, Bird is the Word” lyric. Anyways, in this series of articles, Bird [really is] the Word!
I have become a wildlife photographer in my retirement years. I travel extensively to find wildlife, but most of my encounters and the resulting images are from right here in our local area.
In the second installment of this series, published last week, I referred to feeding whole peanuts to blue jays so I can photograph them flying off. First, let me say that I only feed the birds unsalted (birdseed grade) peanuts. Second, I only do this when there is snow in the air. The images are much more dramatic when snowflakes are present, especially when the birds stir up the light fluffy snow upon takeoff.
Attracting the blue jays to the peanuts is easy, sometimes they abscond with a number of them before I can even get back to my camera. Getting them to cooperate in their departure direction is another matter. I strive to get them to fly toward me, but alas, I take what I can get.
I captured this first image of a jay holding a snow-covered peanut prior to taking off a couple of weeks ago.
These next two images were captured that same day. You can see why I like to photograph the blue jays flying with the peanuts. They act like they are ‘getting away’ with something when they grab and go.
Sometimes, the jays look like they are performing in a ballet, as was this case for this image. This blue jay had arrived late at the buffet and could only manage to fly off with a sunflower seed.
Sometimes the blue jays bicker over a single peanut, even when there are several available to them.
Other times, they cooperate and fly off with peanuts of their own.
Although finding enough food, especially in the winter, is serious business for the jays, I find their actions with peanuts very entertaining and downright comedic at times. The next few images were captured last winter and are among my favorite for this category of staged wildlife images. And by staged, of course, I mean that I provided them with the props, and they acted out the scenes.
One last image to share is of this blue jay who had arrived late at last week’s peanut offering and found that the only peanut remaining was an empty shell. The jay seemed to be saying, “Who’s the wise guy that took the peanuts out of this shell?”, as it spat it out.
I plan to submit more in this series of anecdotes about my local wildlife encounters in the future. If you have any questions or comments for me, or even suggestions, I can be reached at dan@jordanphotog.com. Thank you for your interest in my work.
