Category: Birds
When You Only Have a Minute
Things are probably as hectic here as where you are. Between baking cookies, shopping for presents, and walking the dog, I’ve had precious little time for photo trips or reading poetry.
So when I headed downtown to pick up Lael’s Christmas present, I took my camera with me, intending to stop along the waterfront if I saw any potential pictures.
Seeing several Barrow’s Goldeneye, I decided to stop. Needless to say, they headed offshore as soon as they saw my camera, as did the Bald Eagle that some walkers told me had been perched on a piling for twenty minutes.
I did, however, spot this Giant Blue Heron with the most magnificent plumage I’ve ever seen. Despite the fact that my hard drive, not to mention numerous DVD’s, is full of heron pictures, I spent nearly fifteen minutes taking more pictures.
Though it was hard to take a bad picture, this might be my favorite:
I guess there are worse things in life than being doomed to taking Great Blue Heron photographs.
Downy Woodpecker
Preoccupied with getting a good photo of the Pileated Woodpecker at Nisqually last Friday, I kept hearing a funny tapping sound behind me. Initially, I dismissed the sound as an echo, but soon realized it was the wrong pitch for an echo.
Distracted, I didn’t see these two until after I’d gotten a number of good shots of the Pileated Woodpecker. Once I decided to hunt down the source of the noise, it didn’t take long to locate this pair, though it took almost as long to get a clear picture of them as it did to get one of the woodpecker, which probably explains how I can spend four hours covering three miles of trail.
These Downy Woodpeckers kept dashing about in the pecker brush, making it nearly impossible to get them in focus as there were always branches between us, as you can probably tell from the blurry spots in the pictures. Here’s the female:
And here’s the male, as identified by the red topknot:
I wondered if these two followed me because there was a hawk hovering nearby, a hawk that flew away every time I approached. For whatever reason, they accompanied me for nearly a half a mile on my walk back, a most welcome diversion.
It’s far too easy to overlook small species like this and focus just on the larger birds. For many photographers, even Pileated Woodpeckers would probably seem too small to bother with. I like to think I’m not one of those people.
A Sunny Winter Day
When I left home this morning it was a clear and crisp, one of the first in several weeks, and I figured it would be the perfect weather to get some pictures at Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge.
When I got there I found the conditions less than ideal, though. It was cold, cold enough that the shallow ponds were frozen soild and the ducks and geese were slip-sliding away.
The area was covered in dense, cold fog. The sun looked more like the moon than the sun. Most of the birds, including birds of prey looked like they were too cold to waste any energy flying:
Luckily, a few hours later the sun finally broke through the fog and the pace picked up considerably. I got my best shot ever of a Pileated Woodpecker:
and thanks to the helpful volunteers in the visitors center I also got by far the best picture I’ve ever gotten of an American Bittern:
Despite a rocky start, it was the kind of day I needed to get me back in a Christmas mood.