The Cedar Waxwing bird, a new arrival this year to my Caledon backyard or at the very least I never noticed them until now. These Cedar Waxwing birds started hanging out on this one dead tree and would eat some berries from a bush further below. I took these photos with my big 50-500mm zoom lens and enhanced the lighting on the Photomatix software. Cedar Waxwing birds breed in open wooded areas in North America, principally southern Canada and the northern United States areas. These birds’ most prominent feature is a small cluster of bright red feathers on the wings, the tail is typically yellow or orange depending on diet. The Cedar Waxwing eats berries and sugary fruit year-round, with insects becoming an important part of the diet in the breeding season. For more info on Cedar Waxing birds, click here. Also to see larger photos of each image click on the photos.

Some more Purple Finch pictures taken in my Caledon backyard by my fiance. See Wikipedia for more info on Purple Finchs. First photo shows a close up of it eating, the second photo is of a male and female purple finch and the third photo is of recent late snow storm in Caledon, Ontario which caught many of the birds off guard. Photos were taken with my zoom lens and other than being re-sized they are original and haven’t been modified or enhanced. Click on the photos for large pictures.

I’ve noticed a lot of crows in the Caledon area the last couple weeks, they are ugly birds but I thought I’d take a picture of one anyways. Apparently Ontario’s crow population has been on the rise for the past decade and several communities have battled with the birds. In Chatham, Ontario for instance, 160,000 birds dropped in without warning in 1999. When noisemakers, bright lights and other scare tactics failed to work, the town was divided over whether officials should begin shooting large numbers of crows. In the end, a company was commissioned to frighten the pests away with birds of prey, like owls and falcons.

The above main photo is actually an HDR (High dynamic range imaging) image I created with a program called Photomatix. HDR imaging normally consists of taking several pictures of the exact same frame with each frame moving from a dark exposure to a light exposure, then combining the pictures. HDR photos can also be created from single shots using the original Raw image file. This allows for a photo in which the darkest and lightest parts of the picture have detail, where a single photo of normal exposure won’t have detail in these areas.

When processing a HDR image you will usually Tone map the image, tone mapping is a technique used in image processing and computer graphics to map a set of colours to another; often to approximate the appearance of high dynamic range images in media with a more limited dynamic range. Print-outs, CRT or LCD monitors, and projectors all have a limited dynamic range which is inadequate to reproduce the full range of light intensities present in natural scenes. Essentially, tone mapping addresses the problem of strong contrast reduction from the scene values (radiance) to the displayable range while preserving the image details and color appearance important to appreciate the original scene content. Not everyone like this technique. Some people think it is not real or it makes a shot look too fake, how you create a HDR image and tone map it is largely a subjective thing as there is many different styles and approaches to it that can be made. The image to the right is the original unedited image so you can see the difference.

Chickadees are everywhere in Ontario not just Caledon but its still nice to see them all winter when most birds are away. Here are some close up macro shots I took of these little birds with my Olympus 70-300mm zoom lens. They are easier birds to take pictures of as you can get fairly close to them without frightening them away.

While driving to work every day along highway 50 I often see a number of hawks. For the longest time I was trying to get a good close up shot of one but didn’t have much success until recently. The hawk above I managed catch just south of Bolton near the Toyota Dealership, unfortunately I only managed to get one close up picture before he took off. The larger hawk pictures below are from the Palgrave area, just south of Highway and the last picture is a baby Hawk also just south of Bolton.