Hand feeding wild Jays.

5 Pics taken 2 years ago. I was requested a while back to repost some of these. After a computer crash, I couldn't find them until now.

I used almond slivers, bread, and pecans. Jay liked them all.

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3. The Jay holds down a piece of pecan with it's foot and hammers away parts of the shell. It never once hit my thumb.

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Those are some awesome pics!! Beautiful bird!!

Thanks for posting these again Trois, I enjoyed looking at your pics before. I think you helped influence me into trying to get good bird pics, now with my new camera I'm doing that.

I must add that pelle gave me a little push too, thanks pelle!

You are another that had a computer crash, seems it's happening to many of us, I must get my recent pics burned to DVD! How did you find yours again, I have older ones on DVD but lost most of last year's pics as I hadn't burned them, but I am using the same hard drive so I have hopes they will one day pop up again, lol, live in hope.

How long did it take to get the jay to trust you enough to do that? Even though they're the "bully" bird in my yard, they're also the most flighty (pun intended.)
I got a chickadee to come out of the tree for a mealie before... what an awesome experience. Like a little puff of air on my hand and then he was gone. So cool.

This message was edited Jan 11, 2008 11:59 AM

It took about a week to get it tamed a bit. I first noticed it was watching me. I had noticed before what it liked on the feeder, so I looked at it, tossed it's favorite out where it could see the bread chunks. I moved back several feet until it took the food. Then I just moved back less each time. Finally I placed almond slivers on my hat, turned my back and it was there soon. I was surprised it stayed till it finished all the slivers. After that no problem. It just waited for me to do my morning walk and would take anything I held out.

See my member photo. It was never bothered by the camera.

Well how cool is that!!

wallaby1, my grandson was able to pull all my pics off the hard drive, but they were all lumped into a large, 26,000 pic file. I have been sorting through them for a while. He could find nothing wrong with the hard drive so he reformatted the drive, reinstalled an operating system and all works fine. This happened during an automatic update from Microsoft. It just suddenly said Windows must shut down the computer now. It did. Wouldn't come back up at all until it was fixed.

You are taking great pictures. I am happy if I helped any. pelle is great.

It is fun, isn't it?

trois

nanny_56, it was an humbling experience.

Yes trois it's definitely fun! If it's not raining, or too dull I am out every day looking to get shots, it certainly improves one's outlook on winter, lol.

My computer came up with an unsurmountable boot volume after I did a defrag, I decided to restart the computer and that did it! Against all the odds, I tried the quick reformat after trying everything else icluding the long one which stuck at 20%, it worked and I had to reload everything. My 'Favourites' were gone but returned after a couple of weeks, so I think somewhere the pics will be stuck. I had more than 26,000 though, over 100 folders with many hundreds in some.

My computer is telling me I have the available extra 20GB of space though, but there is a chance. Do you know what your grandson did to get your pics back?

wallaby1, I get my best pictures when it is cloudy. Here, sometimes, the sun and contrast are extreme. A higher shutter speed would be nice at times though. Rain is a wipeout.

My grandson works at Dell in customer support for large companies. I will ask him when he gets here this afternoon, but I won't guarantee I will understand what he says. We can hope your pics are recoverable. I also had most of my more recent ones backed up on an external hard drive. I back up the first of each month. Since I don't want everything in duplicate, I haven't used the backup for recovery.

trois

It's funny how the different climates are, it doesn't take much shade in winter here to be impossible. The sun only takes a small arc in the southern sky.

Lucky for you, your grandson having the know how, tell him to write down the instructions, lol, thanks.

Great photo's! We get a lot of Blue Jay's too and I know they love Peanuts, but I've never tried to hand feed a Blue Jay! I'm amazed it stayed right there on your hand while eating! Usually Jays take a morsel and fly into a tree to eat it ... that bird really does trust you!

Thanks for sharing those wonderful pic's! I just started lurking on the Birdwatching forum so I didn't see your photo's before today and they really are wonderful!

You are correct about different locations having very different effects on pics. When the humidity is high here, it softens the light to a more pleasing level.

drsaul, thank you very much. America has no shortage of beautiful birds.

plantladylin, thank you. I am sure you will enjoy this forum. The Jay felt free to use my thumb as an anvil. But, never once hurt me. I think this might be the one that brought me the beer bottle cap for Christmas.

trois

:) Love it ... he brought you a bottle cap? No beer, no bottle, just the cap? I guess it is the thought that counts! LOL.

I didn't see the bird that left it. Just guessing.

I posted a pic of cap Jan 5, this forum.

This message was edited Jan 11, 2008 1:55 PM

Trois---

How you got that great of pictures with the Jay in your hand is nothing short of amazing. You take incredible photos with your "bird cam" as well. They are beyond my imagination of what I would see on this site.

There are lots of great photographers here. Most of do great shots with the camera in their hands, which is above my ability at this time. (getting old)
I am very happy that you enjoy the pics. Thank you!

trois

Yes, I agree there are many great shots on this forum. Better than many that are published!