Jay Stalking: Failing the Background Check

I was excited yesterday, because I saw a second male jay in the yard (word must be getting around about the treasure trove of peanuts to be found here! :). I even heard the two squawking at each other. Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to get outside in time to try to get some pics of them together, but hopefully they'll both be back again. I only saw the one today, though, so we'll see...

In the meantime, here are some shots I captured over the last couple of days. This first one isn't in flight, but I think it could make a great textbook shot of the Western Scrub Jay. (You can click on the image to see a larger version.

And I got this rather cool shot of him with his beak open (sans peanut for a change!):

Now for some of the flying shots. This first one's not too bad, although you don't get to see his face at all:

And this is certainly a different position than most of the shots I've gotten:

But most of my problems over the last couple of days have been uncooperative backgrounds:

And I figure, as long as I'm hanging out in the back waiting for Mr. Jay to appear, I might as well work on improving my technique at capturing hummingbirds in flight as well. This is the best so far:

Jay Stalking

I have a male scrub jay hanging around my backyard, and one of my obsessions this summer will be to try to get a decent photo of him—in flight.

These are just gorgeous birds. I've had one visit in past years, but usually he would only make an appearance a couple of times over a couple of days, and then he'd be gone. But last year I learned they REALLY like peanuts, which I found out after I discovered one swooping in to steal them out of the food mix I would put out for the squirrels I'd released after rehabilitating them. So I think I'll be able to keep this guy around for a while and even have some control of where he arrives using strategic peanut placement. :)

He was here several times this weekend, so I've been keeping my camera handy and managed to get a few half-decent shots (out of DOZENS taken!). Unfortunately, even when I get a pretty good shot of the bird, half the time it's against a background that doesn't do it justice, like this one of him running along my roof:

Or, they're not positioned the best:

Or, there's something random in the way:

Fortunately, nowadays the latter can be dealt with quite effectively using graphics software:

But I also got a few shots in that aren't TOO bad (or, at the very least, they have something interesting about them):

Of course, you may have already noticed that all of these shots were taken when the bird was standing still. And as tough as those were to get, catching one in flight was a WHOLE different ballgame!

My goal is to end up with one similar to the one taken by NaturesDisplay that's at the top of this post (which was the ONLY flying pic at either of the stock photo sites I use, so that was somewhat reassuring...).

One thing to remember about birds, though, is they're freakin' fast! Which is why many of my attempts at catching this guy on the wing ended up along the lines of these (yes, there really IS a bit of the bird in the second one...):

So far, these are the best of the bunch:

But this is just the beginning. I'm determined to get a good shot of this guy in flight before the summer is over!

Stay tuned...