I heard this fellow before I saw him. He had an unbelievable loud screech of a call. Beyond brassy. You can just see the red portion of the red and yellow wing bars typical of redwing blackbirds. The light outline on the feathers is the last stage of juvenile before he goes all black as an adult.
Shot with my latest lens, a Sony 300mm f/2.8 GM OSS. This was the lens I decided to buy after testing the Canon 400mm DO II—that was a sharp lens, but the Sony is significantly sharper. Most of the images, as above, have a distinct ‘you are there’ look to them.


This Towee had a habit of looking upward as shown above. Maybe he’s just haughty; maybe he’s waiting for food to fall down. Maybe he thinks my jokes are lame? Click on an image to see it larger.
The little chickadees love to perch on the empty hooks on the back porch posts. It makes for dramatic shots. This one is a test of the Sony 2x extender with the 300mm f/2.8 lens (making it into a 600mm f/5.6 lens).
The sapsuckers have become regular visitors. When the first one arrived, he looked a little worse for wear - missing feathers, broken feathers, and very shy of humans. Now there are multiple sapsuckers visiting the feeder, and they all look pretty healthy. They are all shy, don’t care to have me around, but will stick it out for a meal while giving me the evil eye. Also shot with the Sony 2x extender on the 300mm.
The sapsucker has a very nice rainbow of color on his chest.