Crow

Crows, being such a dark black, are famously hard to photograph well.

When I woke up this morning, I noticed this crow sitting in our cherry tree. It’s no coincidence that the cherries are starting to ripen. I figured I’d get the camera and long 500mm lens out, and he’d still be there or he wouldn’t be.

Shot with the Fuji 500mm f/5.6 lens wide open, so there’s a limited depth of field. I had to focus manually; I’d forgotten that I’d put the camera in manual focus for some reason or other. I didn’t want to mess around with menus, I just focused and took the shots.

I was lucky; I got maybe a handful of photos before I lost focus again and I never get it again quite as good as in this shot.

I was struck by the strong personality of this crow. He muttered to himself—a very low, very quiet sort of demi-caw. As if he were thinking troubling thoughts, if I may anthropomorphize. ;)

I saw him later in the day in the grass out back; I think he was probably doing some bug hunting. Here’s a close-up crop of the bird from the shot above:

You can see how limited the depth of field was; his feet are slightly out of focus. He jumped to another part of the tree for a minute:

He looks slightly less serious, but if you ask me, he’s a very focused bird! Quite the thinker, I suspect, in crow murders. But he also strikes me as a loner, and if so, he’s survived on his wits largely because he seems pretty smart in his behaviors. He takes advantage of Donna’s songbird feeders, for example. And he’s skittish; it was a bit of luck and a bit of stealth to get the shots I did.