Tearing down his house! ID please.

nice shot indeed. colorful bird.

I'm sure it's a weaver bird, they are great in building nests.
Great shots, the colours look very good.

Very nice captures of the moment and a coloful bird too. Good job Permagrin.

Thank you everyone...he was enchanting...I've never seen such a destructive frenzy. I put the second photo on my desktop, just to make me smile. I can see that I've definitely got my work cut out for me, if I want to photograph birds. In all my arsenal, would any of you recommend a particular lens, to facilitate this? (It's not really in the budget to buy another one at present.) Also, I could borrow my husband's 200 2.8 w/a tc, if that would be better.

Use the longest lens you have. Small birds, even with my 100-400L need to be close, like 10 to 25 feet or so to get a good size picture from. That's something you never realize till you start shooting with a telephoto lens.

I don't know what you'd ID this bird as over there; but here in South Africa it's called a masked weaver. I havn't been able to photograph one of them yet, but here is a photo or two of a weaver which is very common in the eastern cape where I live.

With regards to the destruction of his nest, the female is very particular as to how she wants the nest built and if she dissaproves of the construction, she starts picking it to pieces. She will often be enticed to view another males new house and in frustration, the first male will tear down his own nest and rebuild it from scratch. The competition between male is fierce and many pecking fights break out.

See the next post as well for more pics....

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The following pics are very poor but for the record they show how the males have a go at each other.

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Wow, very interesting...it would explain why the little guy was on a berserker!

Permagrin wrote in post #2117315
I've never been interested in photographing birds until lately (dazzlebea's and calico's photos, aside from yours, oh inspired one, have made me want to see them closer)

Thank you, Permagrin! That is so nice

Quite a show, glad you had the chance to get some pics. I looked through several books and agree with Mitch (canonloader) that it lookes like an oriole. But somehow it is tough to get the exact ID, in part because of the red eye. All the pictures I saw show the orioles with black eyes.

Sorry, I mistakingly posted the same pics twice, so scroll up and look at my second post again. Here is one more showing a female destroying a nest. And we think we have a hard time pleasing our woman

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rmarsh wrote in post #2127705
The following pics are very poor but for the record they show how the males have a go at each other.

That must be it!!! Maybe they are in the States illegally and decided to wear a mask

They'd never get through your security

dazzlebea wrote in post #2127721
Thank you, Permagrin! That is so nice

Quite a show, glad you had the chance to get some pics. I looked through several books and agree with Mitch (canonloader) that it lookes like an oriole. But somehow it is tough to get the exact ID, in part because of the red eye. All the pictures I saw show the orioles with black eyes.

Bea, you get amazing shots with your 70-200...I don't know how you do it on f/4 or lower (gosh the terminology makes me crazy)....do you use a tripod?

rmarsh wrote in post #2127726
Sorry, I mistakingly posted the same pics twice, so scroll up and look at my second post again. Here is one more showing a female destroying a nest. And we think we have a hard time pleasing our woman

Thanks for the photos rmarsh. Having never been a birder (when I do animals, I photograph mostly the larger preditors), suddenly everything about these guys just amazes me.

A pleasure permagrin. Going to bed now. Goodnight.

Well, as far as I know, Orioles are the only bird in the US that weaves a nest similar to that one and out on the end of a branch. The colors don't match exactly whats in my book, but this may be a juvenile with his first nest and his plumage hasn't finished changing.

You can see a band on his leg though, so someone knows what it is.