The Birds
We frequently get large congregations of these extremely noisy and messy black birds called starlings in our neighborhood. In the summer they are a problem, especially if you have a lot of trees and want to enjoy your yard. We had a few large trees near our deck which provided nice, natural, cool shade, but come early evening you had to retreat to the indoors since the birds would come to spend the night in those trees. Between the noise, which was bad enough, and the droppings, which were intolerable since it fell like rain, there was no way to stay outside on the deck under the shade of the trees or in the yard to enjoy a summer evening. The problem was so awful that I would have to scrub the deck and deck furniture with bleach just so I could allow the kids to play out there when they were small. It was really disgusting and frustrating.Our neighbors had the same issues and between us, we tried all sorts of methods to try to drive them off. We used high frequency noise machines, cap guns to scare them, nothing seemed to work. We were told that if we just trimmed and thinned the canopy of the trees it would cause them to search for heavier cover and would still preserve our shade...well it sounded good but didn't work. In the long run, we ended up removing and trimming away the trees that hung over the deck just so we could use it at all.
This was taken a few weeks ago right from my front door. This was a "small" flock compared to what we experience in the summer months.
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*I am aware that my archives are broken I've been trying to fix them for several weeks and have been unable to. Blogger has been completely unresponsive to my repeated requests for help. I know the problem is not anything that I have changed since they worked fine between August and December and I've changed nothing in my settings that would affect the archives. Unfortunately Blogger has very poor technical support and they send an occasional form email telling where to look to troubleshoot including Google groups, which I've tried to no avail. In the meantime I apologize for any inconvenience to my visitors.
Labels: birds, black and white, nature, wildlife
posted by Laurie at 6:30 AM
24 Comments:
Great shot, Laurie. I understand your frustration with Starlings. We had a tiny hole in our roof up near the gutters, and they built a nest in there. Noisy little things. Thought they'd come through the house! I really like this shot in B&W. Great job!
I love it, nice shot.
lovely shot...! black and white really adds to it....
say what you will but that kind of sight really does brighten up ur day...
les oiseaux qui s'envolent et s'en vont dans un pays de l'imagination pour faire éclore nos douces pensées.
ta phot est très belle et le ton est merveilleux.
Such a nice, moody winter photo.
~April
http://visualmeditations.my-expressions.com
The Birds...the invasion of the Starlings. They are really messy. Too bad you had to loose your shade trees on the deck.
I do like the composition of this picture.
Love the way all the birds are in sihouette. Poor Laurie, having to work :)
Suby
The spirit of Hitchcock lives on.
Laurie, I don't think your Archives links are working as I get a 404 when I clink on the top one.
here tree branches look like they try to reach and catch the starlings, and it's nice to see all shapes of wings together in silhouette. beautiful capture against the cloudy sky.
I've had the motto recently....just go with the flow. If you can't beat them, photograph them! This is really lovely, Laurie. It has a real sense of expansiveness with the upward flight and movement of the branches...
i was just reading the other day that starlings are a non-native invader of the US, and are threatening the habitat of many of your native species. over here, they are mainly found in rural woodlands and i have to say can be an awesome sight as they congregate in flocks of up to 250,000 at dusk, ebbing and flowing liduidly in the sky before roosting for the night.
AMAZING Laurie!!!!
This is one of my favourites...great shot!
WOW! You did some excellent work here. This is definitly one of my favorites.
Really fantastic! I love the multitude of black shapes in the birds and how that plays against an ominous sky.
The black and white shot is great. I like the action of the birds. The bare treed are great.
I understand totally about your problem with the starlings! those are an introduced species to Australia and are a real pest!! otherwise, the photo is great :)
Great composed wit all these birds.
very nice shot ... These congregate in really large numbers ... you've captured it very well.
Nice one Laurie, I love the frozen effect of all the silhouettes.
Nice one Laurie, I love the frozen effect of all the silhouettes.
Good shot, Laurie. I know what you mean about the birds. I work in downtown Charlotte, and there are places on the sidewalk that you can't walk on after a certain time because of all of the birds. Also, businesses have to spend money to keep the sidewalk clean. They have to power-spray every day in the summer.
It's sad to lose the trees, but sometimes you have to defend yourself! :-)
So you where there at the right moment. Nice capture.
Sorry to hear about the pest problem. You did a great job of capturing the birds as a mass of individual points which I think really works well for this composition.
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