I have had some luck recently feeding wild birds out of my hand. I stand next to the bird feeder, sunflower seeds in my bare outstretched hand, and wait… and wait… and three times in the last few weeks, a small bird has lit on my fingertips and grabbed a seed. It’s pretty cool.
I’ve been encouraging Jeannine to try it, and a couple of days ago, when she went out to fill the bird feeder, she came REALLY close to getting a bird to eat out of her hand. I think she was startled when the bird landed on her hand, and she reflexively moved a bit — and it was enough to make the wild, naturally skittish bird fly off.
But I had my camera set up in the window, looking out at the scene, and I captured some video from which I grabbed the following six frames. I love the expression on Jeannine’s face as she feels the little bird feet grasping her fingers. I saw this from inside the house (I was watching at the moment when the bird landed on her hand), but the slow-motion video setting of my camera caught her wonderful reaction in its several stages. — PL
(P.S.Actually, as I think more about it, I realize that the bird MAY have grabbed a seed from her hand. It all happened pretty quickly, so I might have missed that. I’ll have to watch the slow-motion video again more carefully.)
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