Surprise!

Sitting on the patio, keeping watching on the shenanigans at the Bird Bistro, I was surprised to see this little critter smack-dab in the middle of a flock of little brown birds. The birds, about 12 in number, were eating seeds that had fallen into the grass. The chippy seemed to be playing hide-and-seek, and the grass was tall enough that he was almost hidden if he hunkered down. He was having a great time! I guess it doesn't take much to entertain me because I thought it was hilarious.

Actually I had a more serious purpose for sitting there with my camera. I had read about bracketing in my big Nikon 7100 book, and I wanted to work with that feature. My camera tends to overexpose, so I set it to take three pictures in sequence with one "as metered", a second one 0.3 underexposed, and the third shot 0.7 underexposed. The results amazed (and delighted) me. Why, I wondered, hadn't I tried this ages ago? Who knows what I might learn if I continue reading the "big book!" As a result of today's experiment and a little time sitting on my patio bench, I ended up with 15 perfectly acceptable (to me) blips, including hummingbirds, four pics of the chipmunk, and a few other birds. If you want to see them, they are here in my SmugMug gallery.