A Song Of Spring

One of my favorite things to do in spring is grab the camera and take a walk down the road to our community’s 5-acre pond. I’m never quite sure what I’ll find, but the beautiful red-winged blackbird is almost always there to greet me.

I’ll usually hear him before I see him … and I invite you to visit Cornel Lab of Ornithology’s “What Bird” page to hear his song:

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/red-winged_blackbird/sounds

The Cornel lab has this to say about him:

One of the most abundant birds across North America, and one of the most boldly colored, the Red-winged Blackbird is a familiar sight atop cattails, along soggy roadsides, and on telephone wires. Glossy-black males have scarlet-and-yellow shoulder patches they can puff up or hide depending on how confident they feel. Females are a subdued, streaky brown, almost like a large, dark sparrow. In the North, their early arrival and tumbling song are happy indications of the return of spring.

This particular image was taken on a sunny April morning in 2013. I was using the Nikon D300 and the Sigma 150-500mm OS lens. I treated the image to a fun painterly effect in Photoshop CS6, and added a new sky background, also taken near my home, and a couple of lovely textures, one from Distressed Jewel and one from Two Lil Owls.

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A click on the image will take you to my website where you’ll have better resolution and a less nasty watermark.  And as always, comments and thoughts are more than welcome!