Slowing Down

As things return to normal here, I have the time to notice the little things that make life pleasant, if not exciting. The Summer doldrums have definitely begun at Theler Wetlands, and you generally have to hunt to find birds.

If you look hard, though, you can find juvenile Song Sparrows hopping from reed to reed.

JvnilSngSprw

Stand still long enough looking for one bird, and another bird may suddenly confront you.

JuvenileSomething

Follow the familiar chirp of a Black-Capped Chickadee and you may find it stealing the prey of a spider.

BlkCpdChick

Look carefully enough, and you may even find a Wilson’s Warbler hiding nearly invisibly behind sunlit leaves.

HdnWilsonWrblr

When even songbirds become scarce, you can always lower your expectations and take shots of the small flowers that bloom in the deep shade of the forest in late summer, like this orange flower

SmlYlwOrngFlwr

or these purple and yellow flowers

PrplFlwr

both considerably smaller than they seem here, unless you’re viewing this on your mobile device.

Summer Photo Camp With Gramps

I hope it hasn’t begun to seem that I am running a summer photo camp for grandkids on my blog, but I didn’t want to slight anyone by skipping our latest excursion where we took Lael and Mira down to the Point Defiance Rose Garden with cameras. The first three shots are by Mira, while the next three are by Lael.

I ended up choosing their shots I liked best to post, but it was interesting to see how their photos differed from shots I generally take at the Rose Garden.

I often take pictures of insects on flowers as Mira did in this shot,

MSRosWBee

but I usually back up further and capture the whole flower, not just a part of it.

This brilliant red-yellow flower is striking, one I, too, might feature,

MSYlwRedRos

but I would work hard to make sure that its beauty wasn’t blocked by leaves.

This shot by Mira is probably the closest to attaining the kind of look I try to capture when I photograph flowers.

MSPnkRos

Lael actually took several shots of our group during our excursion, but this shot of Mira is my favorite.

Lael'sMiraShot

In a lot of her shots Lael included several flowers

LaelDahliasWBee

instead of focusing on, and isolating, a single flower like I usually do.

My favorite Lael shot, though, was this one of an Echinacea (I think?)

LaelFuzyFlwr

she shot through the fence, perhaps because I would never have thought of shooting it this way.

Leslie insisted I needed to include a shot of Lael in this blog entry if I was going to include a shot of Mira so she sent me this shot she took on the outing.

LaelWCamera

Of course, I was focusing on presenting Lael’s work when I chose the shot of Mira, not Mira, per se. I have, however, been criticized rather regularly for not getting enough shots of people when I’m out on a family hike.

I wasn’t sure I was going to return to Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge after my dental appointment since the birding wasn’t very good in the morning, but since I couldn’t make it home for dinner I decided to give it another shot. I’m glad I did. I got shots of birds I haven’t gotten a shot of for over a year.

Though I had seen a Green Heron weeks earlier in Santa Rosa and even that morning, they flew away too rapidly to get a picture of it. This Green Heron stood in the middle of a shallow pond posing

RdgfldGrenHrn

for a very long time.

The best shot, though, came when it started slowly walking along the bank with its green, head feathers standing straight up.

RdgfldGrenHrn2

I thought it was stalking prey, but it turned out it was actually trying to defend its territory against a Yellowlegs

.

RdgfldYllwLgs

I assume the raised feathers were meant to intimidate the intruder, but they didn’t as the Yellowlegs continued to calmly search for food, totally ignoring the heron.

RdgfldYllwLgs2

The best shot of the day, though, came a few hundred yards up the road when I spotted this bird. I thought it was a Sora, but a little research revealed it was an immature Virginia Rail.

Rail

While photographing the juvenile, I glimpsed another, more mature, Virginia Rail.

VirRail

I’m still not sure if it was an adult or merely an older juvenile since it lacks the orange beak and the bright colors on the head an adult should have. Still, it’s definitely a Virginia Rail, not the Sora I originally thought I’d seen. I usually see Virginia Rails at Theler, but despite hearing them several times I haven’t managed to sight one there this year.

Back to the Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge

I am seeing my dentist too often lately, but a small consolation is I get to visit the Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge, a place I used to walk regularly when I taught at Battle Ground. Sometimes I visit in the morning AND in the evening before returning home if birding is good in the morning.

This visit I was greeted by large flocks of American Goldfinches, though I was only able to capture shots of a few intrepid individuals that didn’t fly off as my car slowly crept up the road. I’m so used to getting shots looking UP at Goldfinches I like this shot of a female

GldfnchOnStlk

and male Goldfinch.

MalGldfnch

Even though I didn’t see many birds in the first half of the auto tour, I decided to walk the loop trail that’s closed most of the year. I ended up seeing lots and lots of very tall grass

WrnInTllGrs

that should make good feed for the ducks once it’s flooded. Right now, though, it makes it difficult to see and identify all the small birds hiding there.

Luckily, Great Blue Herons

TaiChiStepping

never make any pretense at hiding, unlike this American Bittern which was, as usual, hiding in plain sight

HdnInPlainSit

or I would never have seen him.