There were plenty of Mule Deer in the Wind River Range in Wyoming last month. It was cold and snowy there and it was snowing when I took this photograph of a buck making his way along a ridge.
2019—Admiring a Reflection
The color of the beak of the Common Gallinule (formerly known as the Common Moorhen) indicates whether it is breeding season. This bird in its breeding colors seems to be admiring the reflection of its brilliant yellow-tipped red beak.
2019—Limping Along
Limpkins (Aramus Guarauna) are wading birds that live in swamps and marshes in Florida and Central and South America. According to my Funk & Wagnall’s, their English name is because of their jerky gait, almost a limp. I didn’t really notice that when I saw them for the first time in Florida. What fascinated me was that they were skulking through the marshy water in Orlando Wetlands Park searching for snails and other mollusks to eat. In the second photograph, the Limpkin reacts after eating the snail and dropping the shell back into the water. The empty shell sets at its feet in the lower right of the frame
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2019—Minus 16 Degrees
The coldest place I’ve ever been is just outside of Dubois, WY in late February. The temperature was below 0 much of the time and always below freezing but -16 was the coldest I’ve ever experienced. Amazingly, I was so excited to witness the magnificent Bighorn Sheep that I hardly noticed the cold—of course 8 plus layers of clothes, insulated boots, and the right gloves (also in layers) made it possible. This Bighorn Ram seems puzzled at why we crazy photographers were standing out in the cold for so long looking at him.
2019—Three’s Company
Brown Pelicans in Florida waiting for fishermen to come back to dock with the hopes of getting leftover bait.
2019—Spring Blossoms
Spring is just around the corner and spring blooms come early in Northern California. The only flowering tree in my yard is a volunteer that grew from the roots of my neighbor’s Bradford Pear. He removed that tree years ago and I didn’t notice the volunteer at the fenceline until the spring blooms appeared in the midst of the evergreen Xylosma. The flowers add a welcome cheeriness to the yard in the last days of winter with its gloomy gray skies and rain.
2019—Laughing Gull
Because of the weather, the winds, the tides, and the birds, we had only one morning of “beach panning” while we were in Florida. On that day, my beach panning was a little rusty and I had to relearn the technique when I discovered that because of the smaller size of my new 500mm lens, everything was quite different. When things finally got sorted out, the Laughing Gulls were my most cooperative subjects.
2019—Joining the Colony
A juvenile Laughing Gull joins the rest of the colony of gulls at Frank Rendon Park in Daytona Beach, FL in late February. There were Ring-billed Gulls, Laughing Gulls, Herring Gulls and a couple of other gulls I didn’t manage to photograph.
2019—Atlantic Brown Pelican
There are two subspecies of Brown Pelican, Atlantic and Pacific. They differ slightly in size and in breeding colors. Since I was on the east coast of Florida when I took this photograph, I must assume it is an Atlantic Brown Pelican although my Sibly Guide to Birds indicates there is some movement of these populations across Central America. A few of the Brown Pelicans we saw were in breeding plumage but this bird is still in its non-breeding plumage.
2019—Willet
I love getting down low on the sand to photograph shore birds. But sometimes, it’s not practical to get down as low as I’d like. On Saturday afternoon, the tide was already coming in on Daytona Beach and the sand was very wet. I still knelt down on one knee in the hopes of getting that unique view but that seems only to be possible laying flat, just a few inches off the ground. Since it was near the end of our day and we were going to dinner soon, I didn’t want to get completely wet so I compromised. I like the shot of this Willet but I still wish I had gotten down lower.
2019—Flight Practice
Gulls and Terns on the beach in Florida gave me a chance to practice panning for birds in flight and I’m loving the Nikkor 500mm PF for this purpose. It’s light as a feather and even using it with the Nikon D5, it’s easy to hand hold. It is now my new favorite flight lens. It gets me closer than my other ‘birds in flight’ camera lens combo, the Nikon D500 and Nikkor 300mm PF lens, and if I turn on Nikon’s high speed crop feature, I have a 750mm reach without using a teleconverter so I still have the use of all of auto focus functions.
Here are a few of the birds I photographed Saturday afternoon.
Royal Tern:
Herring Gull:
Laughing Gull:
Ring-billed Gull:
