The Summer of Swainson’s Is Nearing An End
It won't be long before Swainson's Hawks start to migrate to South America and some may already have started their journey south.
It won't be long before Swainson's Hawks start to migrate to South America and some may already have started their journey south.
Today I wanted to share another example of close up and full body images of another one of my favorite birds; the Reddish Egret.
One December morning in 2008 I was sitting in the sand at Fort De Soto County Park's north beach in Florida when a Great Blue Heron came up and perched on a driftwood stump that had washed up onto the shore.
One of the nicknames for a Coyote is the "Prairie Wolf" and like wolves; they can be very efficient hunters.
One morning in 2008 I photographed this Green Heron at Sawgrass Lake Park in Pinellas County, Florida as it perched and preened on broken branch that was laying in the water.
The dark morph Ferruginous Hawk above had just lifted off from a power pole when I photographed it with a partly cloudy sky in the background.
Last month while up in Montana I saw this young Red-tailed Hawk just standing in the road looking around and not acting the least bit concerned about the pickup or the two large lens that were pointed at it.
Like this handsome Ferruginous Hawk that I photographed in the centennial Valley of Montana... On The Wing Photography has landed!
My blog is moving to a new hosting provider and I can't wait to hop on over there!
This image shows a side view of the Pronghorn buck's face with the two unusual horn growths shown protruding from its muzzle.
I love the Barn Owl's deep-set, dark and mysterious eyes, the silent way that they glide past, their monkey like face plus their beautiful colors and patterns.
When I did my post the other day on "Missing Fort De Soto" I found this Black Skimmer image in my archives while looking for photos to put in that post and wanted to share it.
A while back I did a post on the Least Sandpiper which is the world's smallest sandpiper so I thought I would do a post about North America's smallest plover, the Snowy Plover.
I saw and photographed my first Greater Sage-Grouse this summer in Beaverhead County, Montana while traveling through the Centennial Valley. Yay! Lifer!
Some days I find myself missing Fort De Soto so much it hurts, the birds I found there and the entire experience of just being there. It is just such an amazing place, how could I not miss it?
Ferruginous Hawks west of the Continental Divide prefer rabbits as prey so what you see here might be the last thing a Cottontail or Jackrabbit might see.
I don't often have the opportunity to photograph juvenile Western Kingbirds but last week I did at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge in Box Elder County.
American Coots aren't thought of as "gorgeous" birds but I do find them appealing and a challenge to expose properly because of the high contrast between the very dark feathers and the whiteness of the ivory colored bill.
Many of the adult Red-tailed Hawks that I saw and photographed in southwestern Montana on my last trip had worn feathers and were molting.
Yesterday while on the auto tour route of Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge the birds that I saw in the highest numbers were American White Pelicans.
Red-tailed Hawks have the most variable plumages of North American hawks but Swainson's Hawks are also pretty variable, there are light morphs, intermediate morphs and dark morphs.
Last month and this month I wrote about Mountain Bluebirds in several posts that included images of adult males and females, today I am posting one image of the many fledglings I saw last week.
This adult Red-tailed flew by at close range which gave me a very nice view of the underside of its wing that shows it was also molting though it didn't look as raggedy as some of the other adult Red-tailed Hawks looked.
So I finally have images of the breeding plumage of this small shorebird that show the spots that gave this bird the name Spotted Sandpiper!
I had been looking at the shoreline where the tree line comes down to the river when I saw what appeared to be a large dark boulder move only the "boulder" had legs and the face of a Black Bear!
I photographed the adult Swainson's Hawk above after it had lifted off from a power pole in Beaverhead County and loved that I had thin clouds in the background which is far more pleasing to my eye than plain blue sky.
Laughing Gulls are quite noisy when they are in a flock but I never minded listening to them, in fact they often made me laugh.
The Yellow Warbler in my image was singing along a creek lined with willows and although the bird is small in the frame I find this image appealing because of the simple lines, the bird's pose and the wonderful eye contact the bird gave me as it briefly looked towards me.
Last week while heading up the Skyline Drive of Bountiful Canyon this Green-tailed Towhee was singing on top of a shrub and I was surprised when it hung around for about 2 minutes
When I spotted this Mule Deer doe standing in the golden light on the Antelope Island causeway I thought I would take a few static images of her but as soon as I stopped the doe began to run so I fired off a burst of shots as I panned her movement and knew they would be blurred