Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
A peregrine falcon perches above Canvasback Lake as tundra swans fly past in the background. The swans winter at Ridgefield in large numbers and are impossible to miss, but seeing a peregrine, while not rare, is much less common. I think this is the tundra race of peregrine.
The yellow coloring in yellow-headed blackbirds is mostly confined to their heads and chests, even for females whose coloring is not nearly as bold as their male counterparts. But, as you can see from her acrobatic pose, there’s also a little splash of yellow on her rump.
We don’t get a large variety of birds to our urban backyard and to make matters worse I can’t easily put a chair by the window in my office that looks into the backyard. So I typically miss out on many seasonal visitors but on this rainy winter day I moved the cat tree out of the way and stuck my telephoto lens out of the window to see what was visiting our feeders. I was quite surprised when this Townsend’s warbler flitted into the dogwood, didn’t have much time to get the picture (it’s a bit out of focus and not well composed) but what a lovely little creature he was.
A female bushtit looks like a little ball with her feathers puffed out against the cold on a rainy winter afternoon.
I rarely get to see rough-legged hawks but it’s such a treat every time I do, I love their coloration. I think this one from 2004 may be a juvenile, four years later I got to see an adult on several occasions and wondered if it was the same bird. Sadly I haven’t gotten a good look at once since.
A male bushtit pauses momentarily on our dogwood tree before visiting the suet feeder.
You’d think I’d never held a camera before.
I don’t know why exactly but some days I struggle mightily with exposure, with focus, with stability, with aim, with composition, with equipment, with everything. What works for me is to work through it. To keep taking picture after picture until despite my efforts I get one that I like, then more and more until I get one I love.
This past Sunday was a fun day to be at Ridgefield, full of new animal behaviors I either hadn’t seen or at least not photographed, but I couldn’t take a picture to save my life. One highlight was spotting a juvenile black phoebe, a bird I had only seen one once before while vacationing in New Mexico. This species is normally a resident of areas well to our south so I was excited to see it once more. So excited that I botched the exposure on every picture save the last.
I never saw it again.
This bald eagle pair has been courting at Ridgefield each spring but I always assumed they nested elsewhere. Apparently not. I had never seen a bald eagle nest before — it was massive. The two youngsters rested while their parents kept a watchful eye from a nearby tree. The young eagles looked pretty big, I suspect they’ll fledge soon, but I could be wrong. Again.
I’ve wanted to photograph the Cactus Tree since I first visited Ridgefield years ago, so I was particularly pleased to see this harrier perched on it in the heavy fog one winter’s morning (the picture from the previous post was taken later that morning when the sun first started to break through). It’s not a cactus of course, and these days not even a tree, just an old stump that reminds me of a cactus. It sits a ways off the road on the auto tour at Ridgefield, parts of the refuge are converted farmland so perhaps this stump is a remnant from when humans last lived here.
It’s a good thing I finally got a picture I liked, as on a visit not much later I noticed the stump was no longer standing, apparently having at long last fallen over into the marsh.
There are a handful of true falcons that typically breed in North America, all belonging to the genus Falco, with the smallest being the American kestrel (falco sparverius). The kestrels at Ridgefield are pretty wary and often won’t stay perched if you pass on the auto tour, and probably for good reason, as there are a number of other birds of prey that share these hunting grounds that dwarf the little falcons in size.
This lovely female was a ways off the road and stayed still for a few pictures before she took to the skies again to resume the hunt.
Boolie 