Once again, Stephen Barnard has come up with some great bird pictures. This time they show Canada geese (Branta canadensis) flying against the Idaho hills, and a pair of mallards (Anas platyrhynchos). Click to enlarge.
Sunday birds
January 5, 2014 • 4:51 am
Very nice pictures Stephen, I especially like the Mallards.
Great pix! I never realized until seeing this picture that female mallards have the same deep blue-purple speculum feathers that the males do. Better open my eyes more…
I love those feathers in the third photo. Beautiful.
Those pictures are fantastic. The birds seemed composed like they were in a painting.
I’ve really come to appreciate birds after moving to a house at the edge of some woods 12 years ago. Sitting at my breakfast table drinking coffee this morning I was watching:
Red-bellied woodpecker and downy woodpeckers at the suet.
A pair of cardinals at the seed feeder.
Titmice and chickadees sweeping into the feeder, grabbing seeds, and going to a tree branch to eat them.
Goldfinches and house finches parking at the seed feeder and gorging themselves – the other birds grab a seed and go, but the finches will sit at the feeder for 10 minutes or more.
Dark-eyed juncos cleaning up the seed scraps from the deck – they and the wrens like to eat off the ground.
A brown creeper going up the tree trunks grabbing little bugs (I presume).
And a special treat – a couple of yellow-rumped warblers passed through, eating from the deck and leaving quickly. I rarely see these.
That’s quite a list for a morning coffee break.
As usual, I’m impressed. Thanks, Stephen. I’m glad not all your birds have left for the winter.
I think it’s safe to say you’re getting comfortable with the heavy artillery. And I love that first-of-day light, the way it just touches the birds and the hills both.
b&
Thanks, Ben. It was 8:22am — one of the benefits of living right by the creek.
Not fair! If I want to shoot in those kinds of condition, I have to drive to the middle of nowhere, and either get up in the middle of the night to drive some more or set up camp outside….
b&
If you’re doing those urban birds you have no excuse for not getting out in the good morning and evening light. 🙂
This is true…but that project is still behind a few others. Of course, looking at the calendar, that’s likely going to wind up being when the Sun itself is up in the middle of the night — which means the “cool” of the day will be close to and in the triple digits….
b&