Month: May 2019

Ruddy Turnstone in Breeding Colors

There’s no way to convey the thrill of a day at the beach during Spring Migration through a series of still photos.  Leslie suggested you needed a movie camera to capture the flight of thousands of shorebirds back and forth on the beach.  My strongest impression of the day was actually the sound of a thousand wings all beating at the same time as the shorebirds rose up as one.

Sometimes, though,  there’s a brief moment when everything slows down and you focus on a single bird.  That happened when this Ruddy Turnstone in breeding plumage landed right in front of me,

paused just long enough for me to get a profile shot, 

flew a little further out, 

landed, showing it’s beautiful wing-pattern, 

flew out even further,  climbing to the top of the pile

before glancing back to see if I was still paying attention.

I was.  

Too Much Good Stuff

Right after we returned from Santa Rosa we headed to the coast to check out the shorebird Spring migration. Though I was afraid that we might be too late, it turned out to be the perfect time to check it out.

As usual, we got there far earlier than we needed to do, but luckily we weren’t the only ones.  This Short-Billed Dowitcher showed up about the same time we did, early enough that the fog hadn’t totally cleared out.

Before long he was joined by  hundreds more birds like this Dunlin.

As it turned out, there seemed to be more shorebirds at Bottle Beach that day than I had ever seen before.

Needless to say, I ended up with far too many shots, a major reason it has taken me so long to post since my last post.  I’ll admit that I hate sitting at the computer deleting photos almost as much as I love being out in nature taking the shots.

Our Last Day in Santa Rosa

On our last day in Santa Rosa we took a final loop around Lake Ralphine/Spring Lake.  We began by spotting a pair of Double-Crested Cormorants practicing their Tai Chi moves.  

At the end of Lake Ralphine we spotted a Mute Swan paddling around while another swan sat on the shore (nesting?).

Nearby was a Black-Crowned Night Heron hunting for a meal. I wondered if this was where the herons nesting in the Santa Rosa Nursery came to forage while a mate nested.  It seemed a long flight.

Back at the car, we finally caught a glimpse of the pair of Red-Shouldered Hawks that arre nesting in the parking lot.  

Unfortunately, I couldn’t manage to focus on the hawk as it flew from the nest to get the squirrel its mate had brought back.  But after two days of getting nothing more than a shot of a hawk’s head barely sticking up above the edge of the nest, I was quite happy with this shot.

Snowy Egrets Take Center Stage

Even though there were four different kinds of herons in the Santa Rosa Rookery, the Snowy Egrets took center stage, and not only because there seemed to be far more of them than any other species. They were quite territorial.  Although they left the much larger Great Egrets alone, they seemed to try to intimidate everyone else, including other Snowy Egrets.

That turned out to be a good thing for photographers like myself because their feathers certainly stood on end when another heron came near.

I managed so many good shots that the hardest part was deciding which shots to save.

Although I never saw a Snowy Egret attack another heron with their beak, they repeatedly chased off birds that came too close their nesting site.