To birders, “looking through the glass” refers to binoculars. Wildlife photographer Glen Apseloff, however, thinks of the phrase as referring to the windows of his house. Using a handheld camera without a flash or special filters, he has photographed enough birds from inside his house, through closed windows, to create two books. Some of the photographs and text in this slideshow can be found in his more recent book, Backyard Birds and More—Looking Through the Glass. All of the birds in this slideshow, like all of those in his books, were taken through closed windows from inside his home in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio.
He wrote each of the captions in the following slideshow.
Rose-breasted Grosbeaks have been described as sounding like robins with opera training, or like drunken robins. Males are striking, with a bright red patch on their breast, whereas females are relatively plain and brown. Juveniles are variable in appearance, depending on their age and sex.
Rose-breasted Grosbeaks can live for more than a decade in the wild. Two have lived at least 12 years and 11 months, and both were rereleased after recapture. They typically spend their summers north of where I live in central Ohio, and they winter in the Caribbean, Central America, or northern South America.
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