This is the tail end (literally) of a female lesser scaup diving head first under the water, water spilling off of her flattened tail in the back and splashing away in front from where her beak broke the surface tension of the water.
Category: Birds
The Happy Shoveler
Even when not in their prettiest plumage, shovelers are fun to watch.
Christmas Summer
Male shovelers transition through several different plumages in a year. According to my Sibley guide, this male’s plumage would typically be on display during the summer, but I took this picture on Christmas day. The males have lovely green heads in their breeding plumage, but in this look resemble the females in many ways.
Time to Say Goodbye
A juvenile great blue heron hunts for voles in a meadow on a Christmas afternoon. The direct light of the setting sun was now blocked by the distant hills so I took a few pictures in the fading light before heading for home. I had photographed this heron before and spent about 15 minutes with it on this occasion, so it felt comfortable enough to turn its back to me even at such a close distance.
Blue Sunset
A juvenile great blue heron hunts in the last throes of direct sunlight on a Christmas afternoon.
Oregon in Oregon
A dark-eyed junco visits the dogwood next to the bird feeders in our backyard. She is a female of the Oregon race.
Horse Thieves
Visit Ridgefield during the winter and nearly every body of water will have American coots on it. I spent a good deal of time this past winter photographing coots at Horse Lake, a seasonal pond at the start of the auto tour, trying to capture different aspects of their lives, such as how American wigeon will dash over to eat the plants a coot has worked loose from the lake bed.
The wigeon will swim over after a coot dives and try to eat what it brings up when it surfaces. Many times it seems to me they spend more energy chasing after the coots than if they had just dabbled in the shallow water to feed themselves. Other ducks like gadwall also participate in this thievery – as do other coots as well – but the wigeon are relentless. For their part, the coots put up with it without much fuss. Here, a male and female pair come at the coot from each side.
South Quigley Sora
Sometimes I like to just sit beside the cattails at the edge of South Quigley Lake and wait. Most of the time nothing will happen, but sometimes a bittern or rail or, as in this case, a sora will pass silently by.
Virginia in Washington
I got a brief glimpse of a Virginia rail leading its chicks through the grasses at the edge of Rest Lake the other day, but they were so well obscured that I heard more than saw them. On this day back in 2011, however, I got a nice close (albeit brief) look at an adult.
Future Parents
2011 turned out to be a good year for watching killdeer for me, all thanks to this pair. I first saw them up close near the refuge parking lot, then early one winter morning I spotted them again running in front of Horse Lake. Suddenly the male jumped onto the female and they mated, and later I had the privilege of seeing them raise their family at the edge of the lake. A little slice of killdeer life, all witnessed in the short space between the parking lot and the end of Horse Lake.
Boolie 