Chickadee

Hi all,

A chickadee taken at a feeder set up at my folks place. Added a touch of canvas above.

Camera: Nikon D500
Lens: 200-500mm at 500mm off a tripod
Specs: 1/2000 f/7.1 ISO 800.

Thanks for looking and commenting on prior posts!
Alex

Love everything about this one Alex. Beautiful perch and background. Turns a common species into a beautiful photo.

Same here, I cannot see how you could improve the image. Very nice as shown. Thank you for sharing, Alex.

A handsome frame of my favorite little species. Great choice of perches. Well done.

A nice shot of one of our cuter and more personable birds out east. I like the perch a lot, as well as the feet gripping the branch, and more than anything that you can see the whole perch in the frame (none of the flower heads, if that's what the spiky things are, get cut off by an edge). I might smooth out the background just a bit above the bird, but other than that, no nits from me.

Well done, IQ, composition. Chickadees are so tiny and often on the go. Lovely light and exposure with a terrific branch of dried ?thistle? a pleasure to view!

No faults on this one...Beautiful frame with lovely colours throughout. Love the detail on both bird and perch.

Will

Nice view of this chickadee like the perch. Great background. Good detail on the bird.

This small-in-the-frame songbird image is both technically perfect and artistically superb. Are those teasels? Did you pick and set up the perch?

with love, artie

with love, artie

Thanks all, glad you like the image. I don't think they're teasels but rather burrs. They stick to clothes and such so we used to throw them at each other as kids :bg3:. Artie, yep I picked it and set it up, I had wanted an image on a perch like this for a while and was pretty happy when this chickadee cooperated. Best,

Great job on perch selection. And then the bird cooperated by landing in the very best spot.

with love, artie

Definitely one of your best Alex!! Nothing not to like here, everything is perfect. Well done

I love this image.

The Background and the perch make this image really superb.

TFS

Alex, Can you confirm that this is a Black-capped Chickadee (and not a Carolina Chickadee)?

a

Hey Artie, I'm not sure to be honest. This was taken right in the hybridization zone where according to the Sibley Guide hybrids may be "up to 2/3 of individuals in some areas)...many chickadees in that area are simply not identifiable." So the ID may be a bit above my pay grade! Visually, to me, the cheek here seems more black capped, and Sibley says as an unreliable indicator black capped may be 'bolder and inquisitive' which this one appeared to be. But, I'm not sure on those.

A few decades back, Princeton used to be smack in the middle of the zone of hybridization, making it virtually impossible to identify Chickadee species with certainty, short of a DNA test, since a hybrid individual can take on characteristics, including calls, of both species. With global warming, the very narrow zone has been moving northward at a rate of 0.7 miles per year, so that with each passing year Princeton is slipping out of the hybrid zone and into the Carolina zone. Tough to tell with this image, but your prior Chickadee post seemed to lack the "hockey stick" appearance caused by the white secondary edges of the Black-capped, suggesting this could be a Carolina. But the safest course, for now, would be to call it a "Chickadee sp." Once again, a very fine image.

Thanks Alex and Bill, Based on this from Sibley -- "cheek patch entirely white," I'd lean toward black-capped. Alex, do you have a good side portrait? Seeing the feather edgings would give us a second indicator. If you do, please post it to this thread.

with thanks and love, artie

Thanks Bill and Artie. This bird mostly hung out in the same pose, but at one point turned. Here is the RAW with the same settings applied as the above shot just cropped and converted to jpg. Hope this helps,