Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
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.
An American bittern pokes its head out of the tall grasses as it hunts in the soft light at the end of the day.
Introduced into the United States hundreds of years ago, teasel can be seen at a variety of locations around the Ridgefield auto tour.
I’ve frequently seen bitterns catch tiny little fish like this one and I often wonder if it’s worth the effort (especially so when the larger herons and egrets do it). I guess they’re not expending much extra effort while on patrol looking for all kinds of prey, be it fish or frog or vole or snake or earthworm.
They say pictures never lie but they can certainly give the wrong impression. This American bittern, swallowing a treefrog it just caught, caught it further away from the water but came down to the water, dunked it, and swallowed it. As adults treefrogs often live near water but spend most of their time on land (and more often near the ground rather than in trees). The bittern has covered both its eyes with a nictitating membrane to protect them as it flips the frog down towards its throat.
Thank you, little bittern, but you keep it. I insist.
Irrational numbers on the sands of Rialto Beach
From a distance Rialto Beach looks like an endless stretch of gray rocks. While walking down the beach my eye was initially drawn to a small red rock amidst the gray, and on closer inspection I realized there was a variety of sizes and shapes and textures and colors beneath my feet. One thing they share, though, is that the endless waves of the ocean that brought these rocks together has worn away their rough edges, leaving them different yet also similar, a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
At the dog park this morning two young dogs were playing when suddenly in their rough play a line was crossed and things got more serious. Their owners separated them and the aggression quickly dissipated and hopefully each dog made a little progress in their socialization. These two otters were part of a family group catching fish in Bower Slough, and thus were quite familiar with each other, but even so when one otter grabbed the other by the scruff of the neck I wondered if this playful move was a bridge too far. But as you can see the otter’s skin is loose with plenty of fat underneath and the victim took it all in stride.
Water drops coat the back of a sooty grouse on a rainy afternoon, but it has shaken most of the water from its head. I wish Canon would build teleconverters into all of its telephoto lenses like they did with their 200-400mm lens, as it would be very helpful on days like this. I was photographing multiple grouse who were moving all around me as I sat on the trail, sometimes walking right up to me as they fed, but I was also keeping my eye on a marmot that was feeding nearby. I would have preferred to switch my teleconverter in and out as my subjects moved about, but given the heavy rain I was hesitant to take the lens off the camera.
Boolie 