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Tag Archives: Bird photography

A Spectacle in White

Sky and I went to an agility event in Skagit County recently and we found ourselves with some extra daylight Sunday afternoon and Monday morning so we went bird watching. I have always wanted to see the huge flocks of Snow Geese that winter in the area and I was not disappointed! The images I made are lovely but they don’t fully convey the spectacle of 1000’s of white birds constantly shifting around the landscape. They feed in the rich agriculture fields (formerly the Skagit River estuary, now diked and drained) during the winter. Flocks lift off and fly around, seemingly at random, forming bigger and smaller flocks during the day. I highly recommend a trip to see these birds on their wintering ground. I was lucky to have nice weather. That’s not always the case. In addition to the geese, you can see a variety of raptors (I saw a Short-eared Owl and a Northern Harrier hunting at dusk), Trumpeter Swans and a wide array of water birds.

Mallard Photos

Mallards are common ducks, seen frequently in many places. The ducks in these photos are hatch year males, males in eclipse plumage or females. I’ll leave it up to you to determine which. The photos are from three different days in roughly the same location.

As so often happens, my kayak allowed me to get fairly close to them (with a long lens in hand) without seeming to disturb them. I should have told them that in a relatively short time, people will be aiming shotguns at them. Not me.

Little Birds and Big Birds

More from my recent photo dump. The Mountain Bluebird was in the mountains. The first Bald Eagle was at a lake, photographed at dusk from a boat. The Turkey Vulture, Western Bluebird feeding young and the last Bald Eagle are from here at home.

Loons

I photographed this pair last month when they were still on a nest. Presumably, at that time they had one or two eggs and since then someone did see them with one youngster. However when we were there recently, there were no babies. A Bald Eagle probably took them. It’s hard work to raise kids.

In the first photo, I thought the bird was sleeping but on closer inspection, you can see the red eye watching me. Both birds were resting in the middle of the lake so I moved on in my kayak, looking at other birds and enjoying the day. I paddled back into a marshy area where I often see Ring-necked Ducks and American Coots and if I’m lucky, I get good views of tiny warblers too. This time I found both Common Loons in the shallow water. I kept my boat as still as possible and they both approached me, diving often and popping up in front or behind me. It was exciting to watch them underwater! They never seemed to come up with food so I don’t know what they were doing except maybe showing off? They did not appear distressed and they did not make any calls. They were very interested in a patch of cattails and I wondered if it was even possible that they had a little one stashed in there, hidden from danger but I never saw any movement in the vegetation. Perhaps they were just enjoying a rare sunny spell.

Most of these images are not cropped, shot with a 200-500 mm lens from my boat.

More Birds

From our recent camping trip.

Song Sparrows. Yellow-headed Blackbird. Mountain Bluebird with food for a nest full of little ones. Elegant Black Tern. Ring-necked Duck.

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