Stalking The Hummingbirds At The Cabin

I took another painting hiatus when I was at the cabin. We arrived on Thursday and left on Monday and I painted only one day. While I intended to paint every day and certainly brought up enough stuff, it just didn’t happen. The reasons were mostly because of other good things happening, but there was a little shyness on my part. I actually drew more days that I painted.

Last year, at the same cabin, I remember struggling (in a good way) trying to capture the angles on a bird house. This year, I revisited the same struggle (still in a good way) trying to figure out how the overhang of the roof related to one part of the cabin. While I enjoyed being with many of my favorite people in the world, I also enjoyed the brief moment of solitude, when I was working on this. While I still have a long,  l    o    n    g,  l          o          n         g way to go in my drawing skills, I felt better equipped in giving this a try.

Here are a few of the scribbles. Ignore the two cartoon sketches. A friend used my sketch pad to do some doodles.

I continue to be surprised at the things that I notice. I've been going to this cabin for at least one weekend per year for over 20 years. On this trip as I was sitting waiting to use the bathroom (which did not happen that often even though 14 people were sharing one bathroom), I was stunned when I noticed the patterns in both arches in the stone fireplace, as well as the two larger rocks on the outer edges where the shape transitions from being rectangular. I found myself looking at the fireplace in a new way.

Last, but not least, I spent significant time stalking hummingbirds. At first, the hummingbirds were eating mostly from the flowers and they moved too quickly for me to get a good picture. Plus, I hadn't figured out what settings and modes to use on the camera. After the hummingbird feeder was taken down, cleaned, and filled with fresh food, they started going there more and more. There were at least two of them and they spent a lot of time trying to chase each other way.

I became obsessed with getting some good pictures. This included sitting in a place during meals with a clear view of the feeder and my camera nearby, after meals, hanging out inside by the window and waiting (and waiting, and waiting), and also sitting in a chair outside. My friend's Penny and Chuck also did some chair-sitting and picture-snapping too. It was wonderful being in a such a beautiful place with time to devote to this indulgence. One thing I learned is that I don't have the patience to regularly photograph nature. No one who knows me will be surprised by this.

Still I got some good pics (cropped only, not edited).

There were other good opportunities to photograph birds. One morning, two friends noticed a large shadow from a bird flying overhead. They jumped up to see what type of bird it was and where it was going. It landed in a tree. Fortunately, it hung out until I woke up and was able to take some pictures.

Up the road is an osprey platform and early one evening when the light was good, I walked up to take a few pictures.

Since I was at a cabin on a lake, my last picture has to be a loon. Each morning, the first thing I did was grab my 30 year-old pair of binoculars and my 1 year-old camera and go down to the dock to see what birds were on the lake. The first morning, I startled a snowy egret. The rest of the mornings, I saw things like mergansers, gulls, and loons. One morning, I counted 10 loons in a group feeding. Even with a 60x zoom point and shoot camera, the birds were too far away to photograph. On the last morning, several of them were a little closer. I still needed to be at full zoom. I got very lucky with this one.