Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
After circle feeding with a female for much of the afternoon, this male northern shoveler swam near my car at the end of the day, minutes before I left to make sure I was off the refuge before the gate closed. I hate leaving when the light and the subject are so beautiful.
A small green hand reaches out from a tree bud as a dormant life awakens. Taken late on a winter afternoon, a reminder: spring is coming.
Three sandhill cranes, part of a much larger flock, fly in formation over Rest Lake at the end of a cold winter’s day. The skies above Ridgefield can be noisy in the winter, usually from the large flocks of cackling geese and tundra swans that overwinter at the refuge, but particularly early or late in the day sandhills may join the chorus.
There is much of me in this simple portrait of what may be my favorite duck. Not lesser scaup in general, but this particular duck. Over the past handful of years I’ve spent many hours sitting at Horse Lake watching a female lesser scaup dive for food. I don’t know that it’s the same individual from year to year, or even visit to visit, but I’m a little disappointed if I drive by and she’s not there.
Many photographers only like to shoot on sunny days but I also love days like this, the typical winter day of the Northwest, heavy overcast with an occasional gentle rain. I often won’t go to the refuge on sunny days since it brings out the crowds, but if it’s raining I can sometimes sit quietly and enjoy the subtle beauty of this seasonal pond without the constant noise of cars driving by (or idling while parked behind me). The scaup often hangs out on the far side of the pond but if there isn’t much traffic she’ll swim over and feed near the road.
While there are often other ducks present, she’s usually the only scaup. Perhaps she enjoys the solitude of the place as much as I do. She’s tucked her feathers tightly against her head, a sure sign that even though she just surfaced, she’s about to dive underwater to feed again.
A cold snap at the end of 2014 left many of the ponds and lakes at Ridgefield frozen over, but this group of American coots was helping keep a section of South Quigley Lake open with their constant movement as they dove under water in search of plants to eat. There’s a culvert near here that runs under the road and keeps water flowing between the north and south lakes, so the water here tends to stay open longer than the other parts of the lake.
The handful of splashes in the picture are from coots diving under the water, in the splash on the far right one of the coot’s legs is visible sticking up above the water. There’s also a pair of American wigeon on the far right, they frequently will try and take some of the plants that a coot brings to the surface, but on this morning they seemed content to just hang out with the coots and enjoy the safety in numbers as well as the open water. The sun was just starting to rise on this New Year’s morning, there’s a hill above the refuge that blocks the sun right at sunrise but it was just starting to crest the hill and illuminate the trees at the far side of the lake.
Just your typical “Say, you didn’t bring any of your delicious cats with you, did you?” bald eagle flyby.
This young bald eagle had been heading in a direction to take it over to my left but it changed course and headed straight toward me. This was the last picture I could take showing its full body as with its long wings it was already wingtip-to-wingtip in the frame. The eagle was flying much too fast for me to change lenses as it flew closer, and it did fly quite close to my car before turning to follow the edge of the lake.
I’ve noticed many times before how the birds that soar above Ridgefield’s meadows and lakes have their flight feathers spread apart at the wingtips, both vertically (as you can see in this head-on view) and horizontally, but this time I was finally compelled to do a little reading to see if there was a benefit to it or if the birds lacked the structures necessary to keep them locked together under the pressures of flight. It appears that the spread feathers affect the vortices that form behind the wings when they’re providing lift, reducing drag as the bird soars through the air.
📷: Canon 7D II | Canon 500mm f/4L IS USM + 1.4x III
🗓️: January 1, 2016
When I arrived at Ridgefield in late 2013, after an absence of nearly a year, I lamented how many of the snags near the road in Long Lake had fallen over as they were a great place in spring to photograph songbirds up close. This more distant snag was still standing and offered a lovely background hinting at the surrounding environment with the blue of the water and the green plants at the edge of the lake and the brown grass of the meadow beyond. In the spring of 2014 I was watching barn swallows hunting for insects over the lake when this one perched for a moment and chirped to its compatriots still in the skies.
This snag has since fallen and there are no more near the road. I once saw a Jedi knight lift a sunken X-wing fighter out of a swamp, so I remain hopeful that one will visit Ridgefield and set some of the fallen snags upright once more.
A great egret hunts in the last light of the day. The sun was setting but its direct rays were already blocked in this channel, leaving a nice soft light. I didn’t expect the egret to catch much but it caught three bullfrogs in quick succession. I don’t know how many more it caught before calling it quits as at that point I had to leave both because the light was gone and to get out of the refuge before the automatic gate closed for the night.
Reflections on a cloudy day turned the surface of Horse Lake white when I exposed for a female hooded merganser as she swam past my car. The auto tour at Ridgefield is one of my favorite places in the Northwest as you get to see such lovely wild animals like this up close and behaving naturally, frequently without disturbing them.
An American bittern seemingly ready to settle in for the night. It had been hunting up and down the channel in a light afternoon rain, but as the sun peaked out at sunset it settled into the grasses and hunkered down. Which made me wonder, where do bitterns spend the night? I’ve no idea if it was going to stay here for a while, but it was a lovely little parting gift on Christmas of 2014, as after taking these pictures I left for home.
The picture below is a zoomed in version of the bittern. I had upgraded my camera gear not long before, picking up the Canon 7D Mark II camera in late October and the Canon 100-400 mm II lens in mid-December. The new lens replaced my old 100-400 lens which I had for almost 14 years, but it was having some issues after so much use (I took it on every hike I went on) so I’m glad Canon finally updated it. This picture was zoomed in to 400mm, the top picture was at 100mm.
Really love this lens, very thankful for it.
Boolie 