Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
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.
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.
While this American bittern may look a bit knackered with its tongue hanging out, it was just trying to dislodge a bit of plant material that was stuck near the base of its bill. It could have reached it with its foot, but perhaps to minimize movement it kept trying – unsuccessfully – with its tongue.
A male belted kingfisher perches on a snag as it watches for fish in Long Lake on a rainy winter afternoon. Many of the snags near the road have fallen over, taking many good viewing opportunities with them.
I enjoy photographing wildlife that are inadvertently carrying around a bit of their environment, such as this female green-winged teal who still has a bit of the plant life she was eating hanging from her bill.
In 2013, I returned to Ridgefield a couple of days before Christmas after a nearly year-long absence from the refuge. It was a fun day filled with herons and mergansers and even my first sighting of Columbian white-tailed deer, but I was especially pleased to see bitterns, a sentimental favorite of mine, at Rest Lake.
I spent the morning sitting still at the edge of Long Lake and was rewarded when a small group of hooded mergansers swam in close to feed. There’s a sign hanging above a culvert that blocks part of the view of this section of the lake, but thankfully for me this male surfaced in plain view with a fish in his mouth.
I’ve seen great blue herons catch a wide a variety of animals at Ridgefield, but most of the fish they catch near the shore are really small, so I was a bit surprised when this heron speared a larger fish at the edge of Long Lake.
The pintails on Horse Lake often keep their distance but sometimes you’ll get lucky and they’ll swim close to the shore, such as this handsome drake on New Year’s Eve.
A yellow-rumped warbler (Audubon’s) shows off many of his yellow patches (but not the one for which he is named). His patches weren’t very colorful, not sure if it was due to age, diet, or something else. He was visiting the suet feeder in my backyard along with some of our more typical winter visitors, I took the picture from inside my office with the window open (and screen removed).
Boolie 