Weekend Birding Photos

Ann and I took advantage of the nicer temperatures this past weekend.  It was nice to get out to do a little birding.  One thing we enjoyed was the antics of this Red-breasted Nuthatch.  It was in a some brush, and not very close.  It presented some lighting problems but I managed to get some shots.  Here is one of them.  Performing without a net or safety ropes. 🙂

Red-breasted Nuthatch

We went back on Monday, tried to find it again.  I played his call on my iPad, but we only attracted some wrens and an Eastern Phoebe.  Go figure.

The juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron was back near his favorite area.  I don’t know why we don’t see it more often as when we do, he is nearly always in the same place.

juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron

On the way home, we saw this Great Blue Heron in a nearby pond.  At first he was just strolling looking for a likely meal, but eventually he tired of that and decided to take flight.  My Canon EOS 7D Mark II with a Tamron 150-600mm lens grabbed it at about 1/4000 sec. at f6/3, ISO 400.  Love that combination.

Great Blue Heron taking flight.

More in a few days.  Enjoy.

 

Good News – Bad News

We couldn’t resist.  Today we decided we had to bird for a couple of hours at the parks at Lake Nasworthy.  The heck with cleaning up the house.  We are pretty much ready anyway, for our upcoming trip to Fort Davis, leaving Thursday morning.

So away we went.  I think I will give you the good news first.  We saw a Lesser Black-backed Gull.  A very rare bird for this area, possibly the first reported sighting.  It was hanging with about 100 Ring-billed Gulls, so I spotted it also immediately, although I didn’t know what it was.  I snapped a couple of photos and sent them to Eric Carpenter, my go-to guy at Texas Ornithological Society.  He e-mailed back to me a definite confirmation.

Lesser Black-backed Gull

Lesser Black-backed Gull

Now the bad news.  Although it is a lifer for me, number 277, it was not my 200th on my 2014 Big Year List.  A friend of mine noticed that I had listed Eastern Wood Pewee twice on the list, so I am back to 199.

But possibly more good news.  We have been informed that there is a Lewis’s Woodpecker hanging around the north entry to San Angelo State Park.  So I have a feeling that we will be checking it out Wednesday morning.  That would be number 200 if we can spot it.

While I am writing this, I might as well include some nice photos from today.

Black-crowned Night Heron – juvenile

Dark-eyed Junco – slate colored

White-crowned Sparrow

Then one more that I forgot to post yesterday.

Eastern Bluebird – female

So now I think that will be my last post before we leave for Fort Davis.  But, I think that is what I said yesterday…… 🙂

Thanksgiving Birding

Ann and I are thankful that, at our age, we can still get out and enjoy the outdoors and wildlife.  That said, we have no encumberments, no close relatives, so we are free to do as we please regardless of what the calendar says.  Besides, I wanted to play some more with my new Canon EOS 7D Mark II.  So, a few days this week, including Thanksgiving morning, we got out and did what we love to do best.  Here are a few highlights from those outings earlier this week.  Enjoy.

Osprey on Monday

Golden-fronted Woodpecker

Great Egret

Great Egret

Mr. and Mrs. Hooded Merganser

Black-crowned Night Heron

Black-crowned Night Heron

Osprey on Thanksgiving Day. He loves this spot to do his hunting.

We saw many bird species, averaging about 30-35 each day.  However, most photos were not display materiel.  Just grab shots for ID, etc.

We added one more to our 2014 Big Year list.  A Forster’s Tern a Lake Nasworthy.  We are now at 198 in our goal to get to 200 by December 31.  However, we are heading to the Davis Mountains area in two weeks so hopefully can get those two that we need out there.

The birds are coming! The birds are coming!

The winter birds are not all here yet, but they are beginning to straggle in.  Ann and I went to our local parks yesterday and spent about two hours.  We spotted twenty-three different species in that short time.  Of course, some of them were residents, but we spotted a few Eastern Bluebirds, Yellow-rumped Warblers, a Greater Yellowlegs, three Pied-billed Grebes, and a few Gadwalls.

In other news, some friends of ours moved back to Abilene, so we went to visit them.  During the day we visited the bird blind at Abilene State Park.  Wow!  What a disappointment.  It is definitely not photographer friendly.  Several vertical ‘slats’, for want of another word, are spaced about 10 inches apart across the window.  Nor was it exactly great bird watching either in our visit.  The water facility didn’t have any water for example.  It is very tiny. There are several feeders right in front of the window that I thought was distracting.  It just seems to me that everything was just placed in a hap-hazardly manner.  Maybe it was just me, but I could see no organization it it.  In the thirty minutes we were there we saw exactly two bird species.  Black-crested Titmouse and Carolina Chickadee.  I think they need to visit our blind here in San Angelo or the nice ones at Pedernales Falls SP.

Great Egret – photographed near Abilene, Texas

So that is my rant for the day.  The above photo, by the way, was not photographed near the bird blind.  Of course, you probably knew that.

Vermilion Flycatcher from my archives. March 2014

Today, I have been going back through my archives, and it seems that I keep making these discoveries.  The following photo was taken during a trip to Knoxville, Tennessee, way back in 2008.  We had been visiting our dear friends, the Tappans.  Ann and I, along with Deb and Paul were driving along the Tennessee River.  Deb is an awesome photographer, too, so when we came across a rookery of Black-crowned Night Herons, we promptly got our equipment ready.  There were at least one hundred of them, some flying around, and others roosting.  I had been wondering where those photos were, and I found them in a folder buried inside another folder.

A happy Black-crowned Night Heron from my archives. June 2008

Our 2014 Big Year list is at 193 right now.  As I have mentioned before, we have a goal of hitting 200 by the end of the year so we only have seven to go.  Sounds easy, but we have to get to work.  We are going back to the Davis Mountains later this month, then a few weeks later we hope to make another trip to Uvalde.  Then there might be even time for a few days to visit the Big Bend area.  Hopefully, we can find those seven during those trips.

 

Migration is getting closer…..

I have been getting out and watching around for the fall arrivals.  Not too successful but did see the first Spotted Towhee of the fall out at San Angelo State Park.  We drove to Middle Concho Park and spotted two Pied-billed Grebes and a large flock of Black-crowned Night Herons.  I did not get any usuable photos of these because of the distance involved, so I will show you the two below from previous posts.  But it is a sign that migration is getting under way, albeit very late.

adult Black-crowned Night Heron – published in a previous post.

Spotted Towhee with an attitude.  Published in a previous post.

Here are a few photographs I managed to get the past few days.

Common Nighthawk on mesquite branch at San Angelo State Park.

Northern Cardinal, female

Yellow-crowned Nigh Heron at nearby K-Mart creek.

We can’t forget our four-footed friends.

White-tailed Deer at Spring Creek Park.

Enjoy the pics until I get back with some more.  Click on any of them to see enlargements.

Black-crowned Night Heron on the hunt.

Sometimes when I am out doing a little birding, and hopefully a little photographing, too, I come across little surprises.  Such was the case this morning as I was cruising through Spring Creek Park.  I was traveling along the shore of the creek, about 175 yards across at this point, and I happened to see a light colored blob of something in the brush on the other side.

juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron

Putting the binoculars on it, I discovered that it was a juvenile Black-crowned night Heron.  He was partially hidden by branches, as he stared down at the water.  I wanted to try and get a better photo of him more out in the open.  I drove down the shore a little bit and found a spot where I could aim my 500mm len through the brush on my side, and also get a better open shot of the bird.  This is the result of that maneuvering around.

juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron

I really like this as I got a better side view of the heron.  The photo below is what he will look like when he grows up.  I took this photo a few years back along the Tennessee River at Knoxville, Tennessee.

adult Black-crowned Night Heron

Click on any image to see an enlargement, and while your clicking check my new Fine Art gallery.

Black-crowned Night Herons – Juvies

We took a quick run to the San Angelo State Park this morning.  We checked into the blind and saw the regulars were still stopping by for their morning share of the bird seeds.  Nothing exciting, so we ventured over to a new area that has just opened up.  In one particular low area of the park, a spring exists, and the park personnel graded up the dirt to build another pond.  A couple of months ago it look pretty bare, but reeds started growing around it, and a few fish were planted in it.  Now it is starting to attract birds.

As we drove up, at first we saw nothing but swallows, red-winged black birds and a bunch of doves.  Thinking that there was nothing else, I drove on by, turned around and came back from the other direction.  As we glanced over the pond we spotted two juvenile Black-crowned Night Herons perched in the trees.  The light was pretty uneven, but I managed to get several images.  I used my Canon EOS 7d and 500mm lens with a 1.4 tele-converter attached.  I shot the photos from the window of my car.  These are a couple of the better ones.

Black-crowned Night Heron – juvenile

juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron trying out it’s wings.

Hope you enjoyed the photos.  Click on either one to see an enlargement.

Black-crowned Night Herons

I was driving through the park one day.

In the merry, merry month of May.

I was taken by surprise,

By a pair of roguish eyes.

In the merry, merry month of May. 🙂

Actually, I was driving through our downtown city park on the Concho River.  I had just finished photographing some young Great Blue Heron chicks on their nest.  I happened to glance across the river, and there was this (here it comes) pair of roguish eyes of a Black-crowned Night Heron looking at me.

Black-crowned Night Heron

Here it is sitting in the tree branches contemplating this beautiful day in May.

Black-crowned Night Heron

He gets alerted to something.  He stands up on the tree branch and looks around. (with those roguish eyes, of course.)

Black-crowned Night Heron

Whatever has distracted him has made him restless, and he decided to fly away on a lovely day in the merry, merry month of May.

Photographed with my Canon EOS 7D and 500mm lens with a 1.4 tele-converter, tripod mounted.  Exposure about 1/1250 sec. @f6.3, -0.3EV, ISO 160.  Click on any image to see an enlargement.

FOS Black-crowned Night Heron

Well, it is back to the birds.  I had numerous comments that opined that maybe I was out of character with my post of the Texas Bluebonnets.  Maybe so.  I am more in my own element when I am photographing birds or wildlife.  Even though I got lucky with some flower pictures that made me a lot of money, I have always had a lot more fun making images of the avian variety.  So this morning I had a couple of hours to kill, so Ann and I made a soiree out to Middle Concho Park.

The highlight was the spotting of a Black-crowned Night Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax).  This is the first one of the season for us, arriving just about right on schedule, which is mid-April for them.   As a matter of fact, we may have witnessed the actual arrival of the first one.   He may have gotten an early flight out of Mexico City. 🙂

Black-crowned Night Heron in tree

We were just driving slowly along the shore of the Middle Concho River, when we spotted this fairly large bird come flying in and landing in a tree across on the opposite shore a little ahead of us.  I stopped the car and put the binoculars on him.  I immediately identified him as a male Black-crown Night Heron.

Black-crowned Night Heron in tree

We drove further along, so I would have a good position opposite of him on my side of the river.  I was able to put my camera on my Puffin’ Pad© and photograph him from the window of the car.  I used the Canon 7D with my 500mm f4 lens and 1.4 tele-converter.   Exposures were about 1/1250 sec. @ f6.3, -0.3EV, ISO 160.  Aperture priority.

Black-crowned Night Heron in flight

After getting several photos of him in various positions, he took wing and flew further down the river.  I was able to get a decent shot of him in flight as well.  I hope you enjoy the photos as much as I did in capturing them.  During the rest of the little trip along the river, I came up with several more pictures of other birds that I will show you in the coming days.  So stay tuned. 🙂

Little But Proud – Green Herons

After my previous post about the Black-crowned Herons, several people remarked about the similarities between the juveniles and the Green Herons (Butorides virescens).   Here are several photos of some Green Herons that I have taken over the past year or two.  Something that I didn’t mention before, neither of these species is what you would call majestic, like the much larger Great Blue Heron which stands nearly 4 feet tall.  The Black-crowned is only 25 inches tall, and these Green Herons pictured below are still smaller at 19 inches.

Green Heron - adult

Green Heron - young adult

Green Heron - juvenile

Green Heron - juvenile

Green Heron - juvenile

Green Heron - juvenile

A little story about the 3rd and 4th photos from the top.  (I know you love a story.) 🙂

It was during the annual Lily-Fest at the International Water Lily Collection here in San Angelo.  It was the year 2009.  The festival is to bring the vast ponds of beautiful water lily blossoms to the attention of the masses.  They have music, vendors, etc.  But it seemed that at this presentation, two Green Herons decided to steal the show.  They flew into the ponds, of which there are five.  They skipped from one water lily pad to another, to the joy of the 300 or so people in attendance.  They were oblivious to the crowd as they tried to catch the little minnows that were in the water.

I hoped you enjoy the photos as much as I enjoyed bringing them to you.  Click on any of them to see an enlargement.