Sorry for not answering your questions sooner, don't know why I missed them.
Christine, I get the feeding pictures because I have a log in the middle of the lawn that I drill 3/4
holes that I stuff with a mixture of peanut butter, suet and other nuts and seeds.
At first the fledglings are not allowed to come down to the log but stay high up in the trees and food is brought up to them but as they get older they are allowed to come down to the log but are not allowed to feed them selves and if they try to they are chased away from the food.
Getting feeding shots are hard since the shutter speeds have to be high enough to freeze the action and they are moving very fast when they are transferring the food, the other problems are getting both in the frame when your set up close enough to get one bird in the shot and another problem is there not always standing on something photogenic and that is why this picture is so heavily cropped, the fledgling is perched on one of the stands I use for holding logs.
I also use a blind and this allows me to get very close, the Pileateds are very used to us and we can move around the yard while they are there eating, as long as we don't walk towards them and make eye contact, there are times I have walked right by them not knowing one is on the log till I walk back the other way.
Ruth, this picture was taken at the end of July, there was one fledgling that was a lot earlier than the others and he was huge, the biggest Pileated I have ever seen, he tried to feed himself at the log one day and the male Pileated flew down and knocked him right off, they sure can be rough.
Martin
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Vancouver Island, zone 8B
Nikon D70/D200 300 f4 af-s, 400 2.8 af-i
www.frogpondphotography.com
www.frogpondphotography.blogspot.com
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