Kinglet

I spent Thanksgiving in Clovis with my family. Here's a kinglet pretending to be a clothes pin...

What can I say, I enjoy photographing birds. Back again to Morgan Territories this evening. I hung out along the boundary between a large clearing and an oak forest hoping to get an image of the Red-shouldered hawk I hear almost every day, but has so far have only glimpsed once. Again, I heard it several times and I know it was close, but I never saw it. Instead, I made these images while waiting.
This first image is a white-breasted nuthatch. I was rightside up, so was my camera and so is this image.
This next one is an oak titmouse. Who comes up with these names?

What does a mockingbird do when it eats a bad grape?...

Today inspired me to start this blog. It was a good one... It started when I woke at 5am this morning, I didn't have to go to work, and there was fresh, strong coffee waiting for me. It was dark and foggy out which is just what I'd been hoping for as I threw my bike on the car and drove to Morgan Territories in hopes of capturing the sunrise from above the fog. After biking out to a favorite area of mine, I pulled out my camera and waited for the sunrise. A pack of coyotes yipped nearby, a red-shouldered hawk was squaking up a rucous somewhere in the oaks (I never did see it) and the fog rolled in and out. It was a great morning...


I returned to Morgan Territories this evening with my camera and my bird lens to look for that Red Shouldered hawk or anything else I might come upon. About a half mile before the parking area I saw a hawk out across the field that immediately stood out as "not a red-tail" I stopped the car and looked as it turned and I could see the white underside of a Ferruginous Hawk. I pulled to the shoulder (amazinginly I was at pretty much the only spot on that entire road where there is any shoulder at all) and started getting images out the window. Any bird photographer knows that the minute you step out of your car, the bird is gone, so I proceded to shoot out of every window of my little Honda while attempting to balance my 600mm lens on any surface I could find - seat backs, side mirrors, door, dashboard... There are much better images to be had of this beautiful and uncommon hawk, but here's a start. I really hope I'll have many more opportunities this winter to add some better images to this collection.

That was really the highlight of the evening as far as the photos go. The evening light wasn't too good. Here's a couple...