Birds and the Beasts

Wow!  People sure enjoy reading about Red-tailed Hawks.  That post about Shooting Red-tailed Hawk got a near record number of views around the world.  I appreciate all of you.  Now I will tell you about the birds and the beasts.

Today, I will bring you up to date on all of the other bird and other images from the past week or so.  We have made several trips to San Angelo State Park and the local parks within the Lake Nasworthy environs.

This little critter was munching among the fallen leaves at the blind at San Angelo State Park.  I am not sure what it is, as I am not up to date on the rodent population in the park.  Perhaps a field mouse of some kind.

Mouse or rodent

This Hermit Thrush showed up at the blind.  It was the first time I had ever seen one there.

Hermit Thrush

This is a Dark-eyed Junco, the Oregon variety.  We were prowling along the perimeter of Spring Creek Park near Lake Nasworthy and spotted about six of these in one brushy spot.

Dark-eyed Junco

We spotted this Carolina Wren just a few yards away from the juncos.  That blurred object near it’s right foot is a blossom on a weed, and I think it caused me to get a less than perfectly focused image.

Carolina Wren

Along the way, we saw this cat, perhaps a feral, or maybe someone’s lost house cat.  He may have been eye-balling some of those Juncos.

Feral Cat, I assume

There were many White-tailed Deer in abundance.  This one had a beautiful eight-point rack.

White-tailed Deer

We caught this Osprey having it’s lunch on a mesquite branch.  He was alert for anything that may want to try to snitch a bit from him.  I don’t think he had to worry about me.  I was about 175 yards away.

Osprey with fish lunch

Over near Middle Concho Park, we spotted this Porcupine in an open field.  He was feeding in the grass and weeds.  He look pretty battle-scared in the face, from an old fight with something.

Porcupine

Meanwhile, back at San Angelo State Park, this young Armadillo was doing some feeding of it’s own.  Back-lit gave it some lighting problems, but I think you can see enough of it’s face.

Nine-banded Armadillo

Hope you enjoyed this post, where sometimes the beasts outnumber the birds.   Such as it is in a wildlife photographer’s world. 🙂

Nothing could be finah, than to see a Carolina…..

A Carolina Wren.  That’s what I am talking about.  We have seen several over the weeks, but never was able to get a quality image.  This one posed quite beautifully for me on a fence post before moving inside the wire fence.

Carolina Wren

Carolina Wren

It was good day for birding.  We saw 28 species including our first of the year sighting of a Vermilion Flycatcher.  Yesterday we saw our first Bullock’s Oriole, a female at the north unit of San Angelo State Park.

Today, though, we headed to Spring Creek Park and that is where we saw the above Carolina Wrens.

Here are some photos from the past few days, since my last post to this blog.

Black-throated Sparrow

Osprey

Northern Flicker (red-shafted sub-specie)

Black-bellied Whistling Ducks

How about another photo of an Osprey.  This time is being protective of that fish dinner he is working on.

Osprey

So now the weather is more spring-like and I think we will be seeing more of the spring and summer species arrive.  Our 2015 Big Year list stands at 118 right now.  Our goal by December 31 is to reach 210.  With nine months to go it should be no problem……right??

Until the next post…….Happy Birding

No place like home……

After having a great time birding at South Llano State Park, we decided to stay home in San Angelo and see if we could have another sucessful day.  We did, counting 41 species and getting some nice photographs.  It was another gorgeous day weather-wise, windy early but beautiful later on.  Here are some highlights of that excursion.

Hooded Merganser – female

Hooded Merganser – male

These Hooded Mergansers were gliding along nearly side by side.  I was lucky to be able to get these close-ups, thanks to my Tamron 150-600mm lens.  All of the images in this post were taken with that particular lens, attached to my Canon EOS 70D.

Dark-eyed Jumco – slate-colored

The Junco was the first we had seen here in the past two years.  They are not present all the time.

White-crowned Sparrow

I cute little sparrow with the distinctive white bars on the crown.

Wilson’s Snipe

The Wilson’s Snipe was all alone, just doing his thing, looking for food along the opposite bank of the river.

Carolina Wren

Another bird that I have been missing seeing is the Carolina Wren.  They pretty much stay hidden, like this one that is trying to stay out of sight.

American White Pelicans

I was able to practice getting birds in flight with this image of the two American White Pelicans.

After another sucessful day we headed home where I started to post-process all these, and more, images.  We added two more birds to our Big Year List.  The Dark-eyed Junco and the Carolina Wren.  Total is now 111.

Click on any image to see an enlargement.

Carolina Wrens

First, this will probably be my last post until I return from my travels to the Big Bend.  We are leaving Monday morning and will return Friday.  Hopefully, I will post something next Saturday.

Digging back through my archives, I again found a few gems that you might enjoy looking at.  These are the Carolina Wrens (Catherpes mexicanus).  I again, photographed these birds at the Hummer House in Christoval, Texas.  I think I will do a post about the Hummer House in the future, since I have been talking about it so much.  Some you that reside here in Texas would probably be interested in visiting.  Carolina Wrens reside here the year around.

1. Carolina Wren

2. Carolina Wren

3. Carolina Wren

These were all photographed in the spring of 2008.  I had not yet purchased my 7D so I was using my older Canon EOS 40D.  I had it attached to my Canon 500mm lens with a 1.4 tele-converter.  I mounted it on my Manfrotto tripod with a Wimberley gimbal head, and was sitting inside the viewing center.  The images were all captured through the plate glass window.The basic exposures were all identical, aperture priority, center weighted metering, ISO 800, f7.1.  Only the shutter speed varied from 1/125 to 1/250 sec.

In the third photo, you can see the advantage of using only one focus point.  There was considerable grass growth, but I was able to put that lone focus point on the bird with no problem, as you can see.

In the second photo you might notice a metal band on the leg.  Dan and Cathy Brown, the owners of Hummer House, regularly invite the Concho Valley Bird Banders to come and do their work for research.

Well, again, I hope you enjoy these images of another cute bird.  Click on any of them to see enlargements.