Yes Charline, I see what you are saying.  Achieving a complimentary bokeh is wonderful when it happens and shooting from an elevated station, like the brink of a cliff, or bluff, is a great way to facilitate that outcome.  The nearest leaf-laden tree was sufficiently far behind the isolated perch to be rendered as diffused blotches of colour.  Instead of shooting away from the lake and into a ravine is a great way of making it happen.  Shooting toward the lake onto an isolated perch removes all riot of colour completely, as happened with the Blue-winged warbler shot, or having a yellow-green field behind a fence perch generates a uniform swath of colour much like a blanket backdrop as with the mating swallows.  The problem is how infrequently one gets an isolated perch shot to begin with. I guess that it explains the love of birds-in-flight shots that a mirrorless camera with eye-tracking can make possible.  Any background would either be uniform sky or blurred verdure.  Just need to be careful with that rolling shutter distortion when using the high-speed electronic shutter.  I don't have that problem because I'm hopelessly out-of-date. I'm sure that I still have some "to do" lists written in fountain pen.  I can still feel those waxy-plastic cartridges in my fingers ... how's that for muscle-memory?  I also remember those pens with the suction lever so that you could reload from a bottle and always gets the tip of your finger ink stained.  I wonder how many people still have a ball point pen, now that everything gets entered into a cell?  Now-a-days, a pen is short for peninsula, like Pen B at Tommy Thompson Park.

The defocused leaf enhances the chest color of the flycatcher so well!

Maybe it's just me but I hear Herbie Hancock's Watermelon Man in my head when it's snack time.  I suppose it could be Watermelon Dog.  When it comes to dogs everything seems to be fair game.  I'm even hearing it while I'm texting.  You made a friend, for sure.  I can picture the dog running in circles chasing its tail whenever you arrive, thinking "can I go out with Charline?  Can I?  Can I?  P.l.e.a.s.e ... I'll be good, can she take me out ... huh, huh?

I missed the male hummingbird but got the female and then a Catbird in the Lilac.

Another beautiful morning with full sun to hazy sun (veil of cirrus) and very light breeze.  Same warblers as yesterday but fewer in number.  Lots of vireos, mostly Red-eyed, calling in the canopy.  Somehow missed the smaller flycatchers this morning but could hear the Great crested everywhere.  Someone's Merlin app picked-up Swainson's thrush and eventually saw two of them at the same time.  One was not that well lit and the other was in complete gloom.  Just then dog walkers came by from opposite directions and both thrushes vanished.  I had just put a TC combo on my lens that required manual focus because I don't have a mirrorless camera that could handle such a small f-stop.  Saw another Swainson's thrush into the sun (back-lit) and relocation was not an option for it flew away as soon as I did jumping jacks.  I stayed close to the brink of the bluffs so that I could access the mid and upper story of the trees and that's how I managed to get a shot of a GCFC.  The edge of the bluff also offers a chance to see passing hawks (RTH), eagles (Bald), and ospreys (there is only one kind).


Swainson's thrush


Swainson's thrush


Great crested flycatcher


Osprey