Finally Got It!
I’ve been wanting to get one of my broods of bluebird babies as they were leaving the nest but have not been successful-until now! I noticed one evening a few days ago that one of the babies was getting rather impatient and bold around the nest box hole. The parents were bringing him or her food on a regular basis so I didn’t see any reason why they would want to leave right then. Plus, I googled to find out when they would be most likely to leave, morning or evening.The consensus was morning. I had shot about an hour of video waiting for them to leave and just decided it wasn’t going to happen. I also decided that I would get up bright and early because it really seemed to me that it was just going to happen. No scientific data just a feeling I had. When you’ve been bird feeding as long as I have, you tend to heed those feelings.
New Respect For Wildlife Photographers
The next morning I had the camera set up and just waited. I gained an even higher degree of respect for wildlife photographers and videographers. I remember watching Planet Earth with Sigourney Weaver narrating where they said the crew had to remain in one place and shot over 100o hours of video just to get one look of an endangered species. It may have been the snow leopards. Anyway, it seemed like my little birds were plenty content to stay inside where they were safe. And then, the parents, in their infinite wisdom, did something very intelligent. They started flying down, showing them the food and then returning to my gutter which overlooked them and called to them. Each of them took a certain amount of gentle coaxing but all four of them left and I got each one on video. I couldn’t be happier.
I am currently editing the video on iMovie and hope to have it up on the BirdOculars YouTube Channel by the end of this week. It’s a lot of footage so I may not make it but that is my goal. I’ll post the link when I get it up there and I’ll tweet it so, if you don’t already, subscribe to my twitter feed.
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