Month: June 2012

While photographing the avocets at Malheur, I noticed that they were almost always accompanied by the more familiar Black-Necked Stilts.

Trying to figure out why that my be, I ended up (as I have done so many times before) searching the web. I didn’t find a definitive answer but I did find that they belong to the same family of birds, which makes sense when you compare them and when you realize they feed in the same area

.

When not in breeding colors, avocets share the same black and white plumage as stilts. I remember a birder last year telling me while looking at a large flock of birds that it’s easy to confuse the two when they’re not in breeding colors. That might be true at a distance but it’s not likely when you look closely. The pattern of black and white is quite different, the bill shapes are different, and the legs are different colors. Not to mention the avocets are quite a bit larger.

They also seem to have very different temperaments. I was amazed at how mellow the avocets seemed in comparison to the stilts. They just plain ignored me, showing no fear. They were amazingly tolerant of other avocets and even Black-Necked Stilts.

Stilts, however, can only described as “flighty,” constantly taking off and landing. They seem very territorial towards each other, though not toward the avocets, which would seem to make better sense if they were nesting and not migrating.

Unlike the avocets, the stilts were easily spooked, even when they were at a considerable distance. They took flight quickly and told the world that there was an intruder about.

As I’ve noted several times before, I don’t consider myself a “birder” because I go to places I think I will love, not to see particular birds. Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is so full of life that I have enjoyed every visit. Still, when I read a week before I left that there were avocets there, I was looking forward to seeing them. I first saw a picture of an Avocet on a refuge brochure nearly two years ago, and I’ve been hoping to get a shot of one ever since.

I did get several shots of avocets on my earlier trip to California this Spring, but none were in full breeding colors. That certainly wasn’t the case at Malheur when I was there. Every Avocet I saw was in full breeding colors. After several days of editing, I managed to narrow my favorite shots down to 55 shots I liked for various reasons.

I took this shot at around 6:30 in the morning when the light from the rising sun seemed to complement the Avocet.

I probably would have been perfectly happy if this had been the only shot of an Avocet I got on the trip.

But as so often seems to be the case, once you’ve gotten a good picture even better shots seem to follow. After driving the road through the heart of the refuge, I drove out to Ruh-Red Road on the north end of the refuge where I encountered large flocks of Avocets.

After setting up my tripod and 500mm lens, I sat waiting to see what birds would show up. So many birds showed up that I nearly got whiplash trying to shoot everything I saw, but the Avocets seemed the most indifferent to my presence.

Whereas other birds would tend to drift away when I pointed a lens at them, as often as not the Avocets would continue walking toward me.

The result was some of my favorite shots of the trip.

It almost makes me wonder if I’ll ever get better shots than the ones I took that week. Still, it always seems that more you observe a species the better the shots you get. And as a fellow photographer commented to me on this trip, “The best shot is the one that is still in the camera” and the avocet is certainly a beautiful bird that will continue to draw my attention no matter how many pictures I’ve taken.

Although I was thrilled to be back at Malheur, I stopped at the Narrows, planning on getting up early in the morning and spend a long day birding. As I was setting up camp and cooking dinner, what I thought was a blackbird strolled across the road to the grass field where people set up their tents. The more I looked at it, though, the more I realized it didn’t look like any blackbird I’d ever seen before. It was too tall and had too long of legs to be a blackbird, but it didn’t look like any crow or Raven I’d ever seen, either. It wasn’t until I got home that I discovered it was a Great-Tailed Grackle,

and turned out to be the only new bird I saw on my entire trip.

Once I had my camera out, I started looking around and it wasn’t long before I saw several other birds, most notably this Western Kingbird,

a bird I only see when I’m east of the Cascades, and one I’ve never seen as close as this one was.

Because I car-camp I generally ask for an area away from RV’s and trailers. At Narrows, it was an out-of-the-way area at the back of the park where there were a number of birdhouses. Apparently the Western Kingbird wasn’t the only bird who was taking advantage of the birdhouses.

I was entertained for an hour so watching this female Tree Swallow defend “her” birdhouse from a sparrow that apparently assumed that it really belonged to “her.”

As I was eating my dinner, this male Tree Swallow landed on a pole right in front of me, possibly to distract me from the female on the nest. Unfortunately, I don’t understand Tree Swallow enough to know exactly what he was saying to me.

A little later, just as dark was settling in, two California Quail landed a few yards away from me,

though by the time they arrived the light had begun to fade. It seemed like a remarkable way to end my first day after a long drive in the rain.