However, when I walked into the room, the bird was still alive, flying all around the room, trying to stay away from the cat. I picked up the cat and put it outside the room and closed the door. I didn’t want the bird to start flying throughout the house, because it would take so much longer to catch it and then to release it outside. I opened one of the windows as wide as it could go, and grabbed a towel to throw over the bird and then to take it outside. I didn’t just want to grab the bird, since that would probably hurt it. It was sitting on top of the curtain rail at the far end to the open window. Since, from that vantage point, it could not see the open window, I walked towards the bird and it flew to the opposite side of the room. This gave it a straight view of the window.
At this point I changed my tactics. I knew that if only I could make it realize that the window was his opportunity to escape, he’d fly towards it. So, to make sure that it didn’t just fly over my head towards the same old spot on the curtain rail, I opened the towel and held it above my head. When I got close to the bird, I gave him only one direction to fly…, towards the window. It worked! He flew towards the window and landed on one of the crossbars. He was still facing into the room. I thought that by now he would’ve flown straight out. I kept the towel up and walked towards the bird. For a moment he kept flying into the open end of the window, but as I got too close it forced him to change direction and he was free!
We’ve seen this bird in our backyard before.
This morning, this same bird woke me up. He was sitting in the tree outside our bedroom making a type of rapid “tok, tok, tok” sound. He made the same noise yesterday while he was stuck in the room. I opened the curtain and tried to spot him in the tree, but the foliage on the tree is too thick to easily see the bird. I went outside and approached the tree. Two large hadedas took off from the tree with their familiar loud penetrating calls. With that, every bird in the tree took off. I walked closer, and over the wall, on the neighbour’s TV antenna, I could see the Crested Barbet. I knocked on our bedroom window—luckily my wife was also awake—and asked my wife to pass me my camera. I was happy to get a couple shots of this pretty bird.
The weather, of course, did not play along, and so the angle that I had to take the photo from, ensured that there was a pale, white, cloudy background, usually not conducive to good photographs. Thinking back now, I should’ve paid more attention to my camera settings. The ISO should probably have been either 200 or 400, instead of the 800 that the camera was set to. But, I had just woken up with a mean headache and neck ache (I have problems with my back). Maybe next time I will make sure the settings are better!
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| Crested Barbet |
Hardware | |
| Camera: | Sony SLT-A37 |
| Lens: | Sigma DG 150-500mm 5-6.3 APO HSM |
Photo Settings | |
| Aperture: | f/6.3 |
| Shutter: | 1/800 |
| ISO: | 800 |
| Focal Length: | 500mm |
 |
| Crested Barbet |
Hardware | |
| Camera: | Sony SLT-A37 |
| Lens: | Sigma DG 150-500mm 5-6.3 APO HSM |
Photo Settings | |
| Aperture: | f/6.3 |
| Shutter: | 1/800 |
| ISO: | 800 |
| Focal Length: | 500mm |
 |
| Crested Barbet NOTE: You will notice that this pic and the one above it are really the same pic. I simply added a blue background to let the colours of the bird stand out a bit more, and to get rid of that white cloudy background. |
Hardware | |
| Camera: | Sony SLT-A37 |
| Lens: | Sigma DG 150-500mm 5-6.3 APO HSM |
Photo Settings | |
| Aperture: | f/6.3 |
| Shutter: | 1/800 |
| ISO: | 800 |
| Focal Length: | 500mm |
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