ChestnutBacked Chickadee

Taken Saturday evening shortly before sundown. If the perch is starting to look familiar,it's because it's one of the few open places the chickadees frequent. It's the limb of a native wild cherry near a feeder so they tend to stop to reconnoiter before approaching. Unfortunately, many more of them approach from the denser foliage of the firs behind the feeder. I'm just about at the end of the evening light in this area, as the sun will soon be setting on the back side of the firs.

This is the more approachable of our chickadee species. Later in the winter, they'll take peanuts from our hands, which the local black-capped rarely do. On of these perched on my camera within six inches of my face Thursday evening.

7D, 500mm f4 lens + 1.4TC, black Widow on Gitzo legs, f5.6, 1/125, iso 50, Av mode with -1/3 compensation, processed in CS4, NR using Neat Image, cropped to 58% of the original, taken at 5:55 PM on October 2nd, filtered sun.

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