Landing Red-tailed Hawk

This image goes back into my archives about as far back as they go. It was taken on October 1, 2007 – just a few months after I became serious about my photography. I was still shooting with my first digital camera, the Canon Rebel XTi which I still have. It’s an entry-level camera and I still remember what the camera salesman said when I told him that I was planning on mounting that small camera onto a huge Canon 500 mm lens – “well, it will work but don’t you think it’ll look a little silly?”

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Bird Banding – A Necessary Evil?

For the first six years of my bird photography “career” I rarely encountered banded birds but in the last two years or so I encounter them regularly, some species more than others. Usually when I see a bird with bands or transmitters strapped to their backs I don’t even click the shutter except for documentation purposes.

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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.

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Sapsuckers Cleaning Out The Nest Hole

The 5″ x 8″ (interior dimensions) tree nest hole of the Williamson’s Sapsucker with as many as 6 growing nestlings inside presents a significant potential hygiene problem. This post is about how the adults dealt with that situation as I was photographing them about three weeks near the Montana/Idaho border.

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