The neighboring flock of parakeets do love a good pear tree. I went to visit them with a proper camera, my Nikon D40, which I’ve had for ten years. I used my Imado f2.8 135mm telephoto lens, which is 30+ years old, thus originally made for film cameras. With the D40 it’s fully manual, which is a bit tricky when photographing birds at twilight, but the reward is gorgeous color. There’s an album for my pics of the colorful birds now.

This character was delighted to have her picture taken.

Many apologies for the silence. As a few readers know, I keep meaning to update, and then life happens. The most recent was of course 14 July in Nice. It was heartbreaking; affected me very deeply. I’m only just now starting to feel normal. I’d had TGV tickets to take care of my apartment there that same weekend, for which I was grateful. Being able to walk the Promenade and talk with other people in the city was a balm.

After returning to my Paris suburb, I started taking more evening walks. During one of them, a parakeet greeted me. My first reaction, due to the parakeet being so friendly, and it being the holidays, was that the poor thing must have been abandoned. A few friends mentioned, however, that parakeets in cities are somewhat common. So I decided to look more carefully on my next walk. It turned out I didn’t need to look very far, because Madam Parakeet found me on her own and introduced me to her partner.

Earlier this week their flock fweeped (parakeet for “chirped”) up a storm in a tree, and one did a lovely swoop over my head. This evening they were a bit more secretive, but I did get a beautiful shot of one flying from her perch.