Toronto Photo Walks: High Park

Well good Monday morning everyone. Yes I am serious. It was a great weekend for going out and hanging with a bunch of photographers again. The light wasn't that great, but the temperatures were marvelous. No bone chilling cold. I guess that means winter is starting to loosen it's grip here now. This past Saturday we were wandering around High Park in Toronto which goes from Keele and Bloor on the North East corner all the way down to Queensway and Ellis on the South West corner. Lots of nature and landscapes, people animals, birds. A wonderful day. I think I will start off with one of the most amazing things that happened that day today. I was using two lenses on Saturday, a 50mm and my zoom lens. Was busy switching back and forth as the opportunity arose. Trust me I needed the zoom for these following shots.

Early on I saw a bunch of chickadees and swapped out the 50mm for the zoom to catch them in the bushes. I managed to catch this one early on.

I didn't see anymore till after lunch though. Man was that a shoot worth showing. Along one of the paths there was a retaining wall where some one had scattered bird seed. So we were walking along and noticed all these chickadees feeding and flying off. Since the few people I was with were a head of the main pack we stopped and started grabbing pictures of them eating the seed.





Now here is where it got interesting and fun. A brave and intrepid photographer grabbed some seed from the fence and held out her hand. These chickadees were very brave and used to the human presence. Within the span of a couple of minutes birds were landing on her hand and eating from her palm. All you could here was the sound of camera shutters snapping away catching the moment.


You had to be fast and have a fast shutter speed cause these guys were fast. This next picture if you look carefully to the left of her hand you will see a gray blur. That was the chickadee taking off at the "high port".


It eventually returned and I grabbed one last photo of it.



Now here's a fun picture. I cautiously moved down the path and waited to see if the chickadee would return for one more shot. I didn't see it but this picture shows what was going on around us at the time.



I can't wait till everyone posts their pictures from this moment online. The different views should be interesting altogther. So I think that will be it for the day. See you all tomorrow.

Paladin Phil