Happy New Year!

I'll be spending a quiet evening at home with my new wife, treating ourselves to some baked brie and enjoying a sip of wine. We might even ring in 2009.

The cardinal shot above is one of the many we got yesterday in Palo Duro Canyon. Below I've added a few more.

Tufted Titmouse

Tufted Titmouse

Female Cardinal

Golden-Fronted Woodpecker

Male Cardinal

Hairy Woodpecker

Here is a new one for me. This Hairy Woodpecker paid our back yard a visit after I filled our feeder up with sunflower seeds. He might have been checking it out. Might have just been there coincidentally. The hairy woodpecker is nearly identical in appearance to the Downy Woodpecker, but the hairy is larger, with a longer beak. The downy is the size of a sparrow, whereas the hairy is the size of a robin.



I've also been playing around with manual focus, trying to get good, clear shots of birds back in the array of branches of a bush. This sparrow was one of my successes.