Favorite Locations – Page 105 – Feathered Photography

Rabbits, Ticks And Family History

Rabbits, both wild and domestic, are notorious for heavy tick infestations and the cottontails and jackrabbits on Antelope Island share that miserable fate.

The Shrike And The Grasshopper (and noticing the “little things”)

I make every effort in the field to “read” the behavior of my avian subjects. Sometimes I’m right and sometimes I’m not but either way it’s a learning experience for me and my percentage of accuracy does seem to be improving. One of the payoffs can be better bird photographs for a variety of reasons.

Ravens, Crows And An Unfortunate Decision By The Utah Wildlife Board

I’ve always loved ravens. I appreciate their intelligence, their adaptability and their association with myth and mystery in human folklore. I also enjoy their playfulness. But here in Utah the future is not looking bright for our two largest corvid species, the Common Raven and the American Crow.

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.

An Elk Calf In Distress

This past Sunday morning as I crested a very large hill (Monida Hill) at the west end of the Centennial Valley I noticed an elk calf below me and behind a fence. As soon as I stopped my pickup and the road noise quit I could tell it was in distress from the almost constant noise it was making. I don’t know what to call that sound so I’ll simply refer to it as a “call”. The sound was pitiful and almost heartbreaking to hear.

Swainson’s Hawk In Flight

This is the time of year that Swainson’s Hawks usually begin to converge on the Centennial Valley to feast on grasshoppers and believe me the area produces grasshoppers in abundance – probably more of them than I’ve ever seen elsewhere (and I grew up on a Montana farm where grasshoppers were unfortunately one of our most successful crops).

This Is Why They’re Called “Stilts”

If you thought that stilts have the longest legs relative to body size of all bird species you’d be wrong. But not by much. That distinction belongs to flamingos but stilts come in a close second.

Juvenile Magpie With Feathers Blowing Away In The Breeze

Earlier this month as I was watching this juvenile (relatively short tail) Black-billed Magpie through my lens on Antelope Island I didn’t expect anything interesting to happen except for a possible take-off shot.

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.

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.