Garrulus glandarius

A couple of those birds have been wondering around the neighborhood for the past week. I think they've been nesting somewhere around here.

For the past few days I've been trying to get a shot of those beauties, which was pretty hard to do since they're quite shy. For days I haven't been able to get close enough with my camera, as you can see in the top picture, which was taken with a 75-300mm manual focus Sigma lens.

Finally, yesterday evening my wife gave me a shout that they were sitting on our fencing. Luckily this time I was quick enough to get my camera and shoot some pictures of them. They're not too close to perfect, but I guess I'm just lucky to have them.

The last 4 pictures were taken with the 18-55 kit lens of my Nikon D40, and I had to use flash to get the lighting a bit brighter. If I hadn't used flash I could just have thrown away the pictures, now at least I was able to crop out the window glare :)

So, these birds are officially named Garrulus Glandarius, not sure what they're called in English. They're crow related, which basically just makes them crows with pretty colors. In newly built neighborhoods crows are pretty common, but when trees and other plant life is becoming more seen, so is this bird, which seems to be chasing away the regular crow.

I'm quite happy with these shots, as I'm pretty happy to see this bird around the neighborhood, and those shots aren't entirely ruined. Obviously the camera stays around the living room, since they're around during daylight as well. Hope to get some more detailed and sharper shots of those hotties :)