Yesterday, Oct.18, I was outside playing with a 70-300mm zoom lens, just experimenting with some different settings when I happened to see a couple bluebirds feeding on a Poke berry bush. Bluebirds are somewhat of a rarity in our area and being small and fast, they are often very difficult to observe.

It was 3pm on a cold blistery 40degF fall day with heavy overcast cloud cover and failing light conditions. Realizing this may be one of my last opportunities to see the bluebirds this year I carefully crouched low until I reached the edge of a pine tree about 100ft from the poke berry bush. As I viewed through the viewfinder I realized the bright yellow maple tree in the background was dominating the scene so I dropped the ISO to 200, which opened the aperture to f 4.5, max for this lens and reduced the depth of field to about 5ft, thus completely blurring the maple tree producing the bright yellow background.

Overnight our temperature dropped to 29deg and a killing frost, so when I went back today I found all the birds gone, the poke sagging and drooping, and the maple tree almost devoid of leaves.

Now I am left wondering, was that bluebird posing for the camera as a fond farewell to summer?

Now if I can only learn the fine art of posting a pic here. I uploaded the pic to photobucket and hopefully I have the correct code for it to post here.

I think everyone here can appreciate the sense of "stalking" a good shot. And, like you say, often its a long time, if ever, before you can get another chance to capture a scene.