Brookside Gardens Birds

My walk around Brookside Gardens last weekend offered more than the usual opportunities to photograph birds. The day was chilly and a little breezy….but full of sun and an improvement over prior days. The birds were active.

The robins were the easiest to photograph because of their numbers and their interest in searching through leaves and grass for edibles. It was possible to get close enough for the camera zoom to do the rest. This bird had just stopped his searching temporarily to survey the surroundings…eyeing me with suspicion.

The cardinal was singing a spring song in the tulip poplar. I appreciated my monopod for this shot - and that the breeze paused momentarily.

This mourning dove was walking around the bed of sprouting bulbs looking for nesting material. In the instant after this picture was taken, the bird flew away with the piece of straw in its beak.

There were lots of these black birds (in the trees, in the bushes, on the grass) but I haven’t quite identified them. The tail seems short for a common grackle. They eye is yellow so that rules out a cowbird or starling…and there is not red shoulder patch for it to be a red winged blackbird. Hmmm.