Red-eyed vireo - a first for me.

Red-eyed vireo photographed at the Creston Wildlife Management Center today.

One of the best places I have been for seeing wildlife, especially birds, is at the Creston Wildlife Center near Creston, BC.  I don't get here often, in fact, I think this is the third time I have been in this area of BC, but I am always encouraged and excited by what I find.  And this was an additional bonus in that I have never seen one before, at least not one I photographed.

And yes, there is a red eye.  I found that the eye needed a bit of enhancement to bring it out, so I played with the image a bit and obtained a cropped shot that you can see below.

You can see the red eye of the red-eyed vireo a little better in this cropped version.

In their northern breeding grounds, these birds eat a variety of foods including insects, seeds, and fruits.  They travel quite far south and tend to feed primarily on fruit in their South American wintering grounds.  A look at their range map is very interesting; you can see where they overwinter and where they breed.  Click here to see it.

Both male and female are active in the rearing of young and will aggressively defend their nests from possible predators.  They also defend against brown-headed cowbirds which are brood parasites.  Once an egg is laid, they tend to it as their own, although sometimes they will wall it off from their own eggs.

I also learned today that there are quite a variety of vireo species.  The vireo section of my bird books gets very little perusal, so it was eye-opening to go through it today in trying to identify the bird.

An interesting subnote - My camera was set to expose in full sun and the bird was hidden in bush when it was overcast.  My exposures were very far off (almost 3 stops), but the raw file allowed me to rescue the image.  This is one of the main reasons I shoot raw - the broad dynamic range produces details in shadows and hilights that jpegs can't duplicate, there are no artifacts, white balance is a breeze, and I can often rescue an image if it is poorly exposed.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com