Recently I posted images of a Tricolored Heron and a Black-bellied Plover where I wrote that I enjoyed images that include habitat, the same could be said about this photo of a Reddish Egret hunting on the shoreline of the Gulf Coast.
In the Centennial Valley of Montana at this time of the year I see plenty of White-crowned Sparrows of the interior west sub-species and although most of them that I see are juveniles there are also adults hanging around foraging too.
There are five recognized subspecies of Red-shouldered Hawks with the Florida Red-shouldered Hawks having the palest heads and plumage. I believe this Red-shouldered Hawk adult is from the Florida race, Buteo lineatus extimus.
While going through some old files I came across this image of an American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) that I took in 2007 at J. N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge
I photographed this Chukar in a field of white undisturbed snow last January, as I recall it was bitter cold that morning but the bright sun seemed to warm the Chukar as much as it warmed my hands.
Black Skimmers are known by several nicknames which include scissorbills, knifebill and cut-water for how their bills slice through the water when they are hunting and how their bills snap shut on prey.
Yesterday I headed up Skyline Drive at the entrance to Bountiful Canyon to see if I could find any migrating raptors riding the thermals of the Wasatch Mountain Range and while that wasn't a "bountiful" activity finding a Moose and her calf feeding near a beaver pond was.
Red-necked Grebes are beautiful but wary subjects in the Centennial Valley. Some day I hope I will have images the show off their beauty in a much better way.
The nonbreeding Forster's Tern in these two images is the same bird and the images were taken ten frames and a few seconds apart as the tern stood on the shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico in Florida.
A few days ago after photographing hummingbirds on Antelope Island I spotted two Coyotes along the causeway, it was obvious from the start that one was an adult and one a young Coyote.
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.
Like this handsome Ferruginous Hawk that I photographed in the centennial Valley of Montana... On The Wing Photography has landed!
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!
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.
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.
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!