Yesterday Dickie and I traveled out to the ocean where it was really cool. We met some older folks from Champaign, Illinois, who were making their first trip to the West Coast and were quite surprised at how cool it was. Maybe to day changed their minds. I hear it’s supposed to reach 90° even out at Bodega Bay.
In any case, I had some good luck with the camera while we were out there at the big waters. I’ve photographed a lot of shore birds – egrets, cormorants, pelicans, herons, gulls, stilts, sandpipers, all kinds of ducks and geese – but never an osprey. We spotted this one eating his lunch atop a power pole. He didn’t seem to mind very much that I was taking his picture. He also looked mean enough to fight me for that lunch:
Whenever we go to the ocean, Dickie and I make a regular stop at a deep pond that is the remains of a false start to the building of a nuclear facility many years ago. The pond is a favorite fishing spot for egrets and herons and there are all kinds of smaller birds around. Yesterday there were a number of red-winged blackbirds strutting their stuff. I got this one in the middle of his call, so I named it “Attention, Please!” because that’s what he seemed to be saying:
Most of the songbirds I’ve managed to capture have been birds Dickie and I have seen on our morning walks down Jensen Lane which runs along a couple of vineyards north of our subdivision. There are almost always sparrows and goldfinches, blackbirds and bluebirds, sometimes titmice or mockingbirds, the occasional flicker, not to mention scrub jays and robins, but the most frequently seen bird there is the acorn woodpecker. I posted a shot of one last December here in my blog, but I’ve gotten several spectacular shots lately, of which I’m quite proud. Here’s the latest one:
If you’d like to see more of my bird shots, I invite you to take a look at those I’ve posted on the Flickr website: My address there is: http://flickr.com/photos/rosebud1929/
Another bird we see a lot of around here in the springtime is the killdeer. They tend to nest on the local school grounds just around the corner from where we live. They also have made a habit of nesting in the graveled front yard of a house across the street from the school. The killdeer’s habit of drawing attention from its nest by pretending to be hurt and fluttering clumsily away is a curious sight. Here’s a recent shot I got of one doing just that:
Enough for now. I’ll be back the next time the spirit moves me! Have a great month!
