An Osprey Pirouette
This female Osprey seemed stiff and less confident of her agility immediately after being relieved from many hours of nesting duty.
Category: Miscellaneous
A Digestive Surprise For A Young Swainson’s Hawk
I believe this juvenile Swainson’s Hawk was taken by surprise by what it found in its mouth.
Northern Harriers Playing With Toys
In a recent post I documented “play” in Northern Harriers. Two days ago I photographed two of them playing – with each other and with “toys”.
An Acrobatic Red-tailed Hawk
Raptors sometimes pull some pretty crazy maneuvers during take-off (the last 9 images in this post are sequential with no images in the sequence left out).
Pied-billed Grebe – An Entertaining Diving Technique
Pied-billed Grebes use several different diving techniques but the one called “gradual sinking” is certainly the most entertaining to watch.
Northern Harrier “Playing”
Play has been well documented in some bird species and I believe I photographed that behavior in a Northern Harrier this week. This bird was too far away for quality images but I think the behavior is well documented in the photographs. I first spotted this hawk on an ugly metal fence post but as soon as I stopped my pickup to watch it through my lens the wary bird took off. Almost immediately it performed a spectacular and classic harrier mid-air maneuver by changing directions and pouncing on something in the grasses. I presumed it to be a vole. For about two minutes the bird continually struggled, wrestled and pounced on something I couldn’t see. The activity was quite frenetic and I took many photos of it. As I watched through my lens I wondered if the harrier was trying to avoid being bitten by a vole or even a larger rodent. Eventually the harrier took off with its “prey”, which turned out to be dried cow poop. Cow pies are common in this area because refuge managers run cattle there in the summer in an attempt to control invasive phragmites (personally I’m not a fan of cattle on public lands but that’s another story…). The harrier carried the cow pie only a few feet… before dropping it. Whether that was done deliberately or not I don’t know but I suspect that it was because in the image just before this one (just as the pie…
Why Did The Red-tailed Hawk Cross The Road?
Sometimes when I’m photographing birds I find myself wondering “Why did that bird do that?”. Arriving at a reliable answer can be an exercise in frustration but often I can’t help myself, even when the behavior in question is a trivial one.
Bathing Vesper Sparrow (this bird didn’t read “the book”)
Vesper Sparrows are “dust bathers”. They do it so often that they’re known for having puffs of dust fly off of them when they’re flushed and take off. In fact, Birds of North America Online says they’re “not observed to bathe in water”. This Vesper Sparrow didn’t read the book.
Sunbathing White-faced Ibis
When common birds perform uncommon behaviors it catches my eye. And hopefully my lens. This was a behavior completely new to me for this species.
Iridescence And The Role of Plumage Variations In Juvenile Magpies
Juvenile Black-billed Magpies have significantly less iridescence in their plumage than the adults so the amount that appeared in this young bird surprised me.
Female Mountain Bluebird Removing Fecal Sac From Nestbox
The nesting season of Mountain Bluebirds in Montana’s Centennial Valley was delayed this year due to a late spring cold snap so during my visit there last week some of them were still feeding youngsters in the nest boxes. I’ve found it to be relatively easy to photograph the parent birds on top of the nest boxes with insects for the chicks in their beaks but catching them in flight as they leave the nest with fecal sacs is another story altogether.
Savannah Sparrow Feeding Fledgling
During our last Montana trip we had multiple sessions over several days with a very cooperative Savannah Sparrow – “cooperative” in the sense that the bird could always be found in the same spot along the shore of Lower Red Rock Lake in Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.
Northern Mockingbird Displaying In Low Light
On a dark, cloudy morning on Antelope Island last month I had an opportunity with a displaying Northern Mockingbird. The shooting conditions were difficult but I decided to play at the edge of the limits of my gear and see what I could get. These shots are not sequential of the same take-off and landing but in the order I’ve presented them I think they illustrate the behavior reasonably well.
A Willet, An Impaled Pellet And A Photographer Caught By Surprise
After eight years of photographing birds it’s not every day that I see something new but yesterday I did.
Mockingbird Flight Display (and a change in shooting technique)
This spring I’ve had several opportunities to photograph the courtship “flight display” of the male Northern Mockingbird. While singing continuously from his perch he jumps almost straight up about six feet as he flaps his wings a couple of times which displays those conspicuous white wing patches and then parachutes down with wings open to the same perch. This performance is repeated every 30-60 seconds or so for an extended period of time.
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A Digestive Surprise For A Young Swainson’s Hawk
I believe this juvenile Swainson’s Hawk was taken by surprise by what it found in its mouth.
Northern Harriers Playing With Toys
In a recent post I documented “play” in Northern Harriers. Two days ago I photographed two of them playing – with each other and with “toys”.
An Acrobatic Red-tailed Hawk
Raptors sometimes pull some pretty crazy maneuvers during take-off (the last 9 images in this post are sequential with no images in the sequence left out).
Pied-billed Grebe – An Entertaining Diving Technique
Pied-billed Grebes use several different diving techniques but the one called “gradual sinking” is certainly the most entertaining to watch.
Northern Harrier “Playing”
Play has been well documented in some bird species and I believe I photographed that behavior in a Northern Harrier this week. This bird was too far away for quality images but I think the behavior is well documented in the photographs. I first spotted this hawk on an ugly metal fence post but as soon as I stopped my pickup to watch it through my lens the wary bird took off. Almost immediately it performed a spectacular and classic harrier mid-air maneuver by changing directions and pouncing on something in the grasses. I presumed it to be a vole. For about two minutes the bird continually struggled, wrestled and pounced on something I couldn’t see. The activity was quite frenetic and I took many photos of it. As I watched through my lens I wondered if the harrier was trying to avoid being bitten by a vole or even a larger rodent. Eventually the harrier took off with its “prey”, which turned out to be dried cow poop. Cow pies are common in this area because refuge managers run cattle there in the summer in an attempt to control invasive phragmites (personally I’m not a fan of cattle on public lands but that’s another story…). The harrier carried the cow pie only a few feet… before dropping it. Whether that was done deliberately or not I don’t know but I suspect that it was because in the image just before this one (just as the pie…
Why Did The Red-tailed Hawk Cross The Road?
Sometimes when I’m photographing birds I find myself wondering “Why did that bird do that?”. Arriving at a reliable answer can be an exercise in frustration but often I can’t help myself, even when the behavior in question is a trivial one.
Bathing Vesper Sparrow (this bird didn’t read “the book”)
Vesper Sparrows are “dust bathers”. They do it so often that they’re known for having puffs of dust fly off of them when they’re flushed and take off. In fact, Birds of North America Online says they’re “not observed to bathe in water”. This Vesper Sparrow didn’t read the book.
Sunbathing White-faced Ibis
When common birds perform uncommon behaviors it catches my eye. And hopefully my lens. This was a behavior completely new to me for this species.
Iridescence And The Role of Plumage Variations In Juvenile Magpies
Juvenile Black-billed Magpies have significantly less iridescence in their plumage than the adults so the amount that appeared in this young bird surprised me.
Female Mountain Bluebird Removing Fecal Sac From Nestbox
The nesting season of Mountain Bluebirds in Montana’s Centennial Valley was delayed this year due to a late spring cold snap so during my visit there last week some of them were still feeding youngsters in the nest boxes. I’ve found it to be relatively easy to photograph the parent birds on top of the nest boxes with insects for the chicks in their beaks but catching them in flight as they leave the nest with fecal sacs is another story altogether.
Savannah Sparrow Feeding Fledgling
During our last Montana trip we had multiple sessions over several days with a very cooperative Savannah Sparrow – “cooperative” in the sense that the bird could always be found in the same spot along the shore of Lower Red Rock Lake in Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.
Northern Mockingbird Displaying In Low Light
On a dark, cloudy morning on Antelope Island last month I had an opportunity with a displaying Northern Mockingbird. The shooting conditions were difficult but I decided to play at the edge of the limits of my gear and see what I could get. These shots are not sequential of the same take-off and landing but in the order I’ve presented them I think they illustrate the behavior reasonably well.
A Willet, An Impaled Pellet And A Photographer Caught By Surprise
After eight years of photographing birds it’s not every day that I see something new but yesterday I did.
Mockingbird Flight Display (and a change in shooting technique)
This spring I’ve had several opportunities to photograph the courtship “flight display” of the male Northern Mockingbird. While singing continuously from his perch he jumps almost straight up about six feet as he flaps his wings a couple of times which displays those conspicuous white wing patches and then parachutes down with wings open to the same perch. This performance is repeated every 30-60 seconds or so for an extended period of time.