Winter Bluebird II

A female this time and perched in one of a copse of Douglas Firs on our property.

David Schoen commented that he hasn't seen any around his place, which is on Puget Sound.  These are primarily open country birds and were fairly common when the settlers showed up and there were 150,000 acres of prairie around here studded with small groves of the local native oak to provide nesting cavities.  We now have about 15,000 acres of prairie, most of it badly degraded, and the competition of a horde of European Starlings for the same nesting cavities.  There's been a program to increase the numbers of Bluebirds, started on Joint Base Lewis McChord and continued on Whidbey Island and some of our local prairies off the fort (the fort has the vast majority of the good prairie here because it burns regularly and doesn't get paved over).

7D2, Sigma 150-600mm contemporary at 388mm (forgot that I'd zoomed out or I could have done better-still need to get used to a zoom).  f/9, 1/640, iso 800, aperture priority, pattern metering, +1/3 stop compensation.  Processed in LR5 & CS6.  Cropped to 6.3 Mpixels (just about what my first DSLR boasted).  Taken November 20th at 11:56 am.

I appreciate all the comments and input on the last Bluebird post and look forward to your thoughts on this one.

Thanks,