Thanks to readers who sent me wildlife photos, the tank is topping up again. We have pix from two readers today; the first is a set of three from Ivar Husa. His notes:
These pictures were taken on a ‘business trip’ to Florida this month. The trip resulted in photographs of close to 30 ‘life birds’ for me. All pictures were taken with a Canon 5D Mark III with Canon 400mm lens and 1.4x teleconverter.
Here is a cattle egret (Bubulcus ibis) in an ‘eponymous’ pose?
The purple gallinule (Porphyrio martinicus) is a strikingly colorful bird found largely on the Gulf and Florida coasts.
The sandhill crane (Grus canadensis) was observed nomming in the grass margins of a suburban strip mall.
And reader Stephen Barnard from Idaho sends what he calls a “windy day flicker” (the northern flicker, Colaptes auratus):
That flicker is sooooo handsome!
“Ditto.”
b&
The flicker looks like she (I think this is a she?) is wearing a frilly blouse.
And it looks like someone has used a brush to dot it with black ink…
Diana, that’s actually a male of the “red-shafted” morph of Northern Flicker. They have the red “mustache,” while our (eastern) Yellow-shafted morph males have a black mustache. (The two used to be separate species, but there is quite an intergrade zone, and the lumpers prevailed.)
Thanks. I didn’t know what these ones looked like since I’m uses to our mustached ones.
Non – je ne egret rien!
Nice pun!
I really like the crane close-up. You can see right through his/her nostril!
Very nice.
It appears the egret is nabbing a big horsefly.
Nice photos, Ivar.
Very nice, all of them. I particularly like the egret/cow/bug shot and the flicker shot.
The cattle egret is stunning.
Each shot has something quite special about it!
“Eponymous pose”…awesome.
Those talons on the purple gallinule are gnarly. (Gallinule…weird name.)
Beautiful shot Stephen! Wowza!
All wonderful!
The purple gallinule is interesting, because the one you have is the New World one (<Porphyrio martinicus, just as mentioned. A similar Old World species, also found in Asia and the Pacific, and sometimes also called the purple gallinule but more often the purple swamphen, is Porphyrio porphyrio. The New Zealand equivalent (P p melanotus) is known locally as the pukeko. It’s colored rather like the purple gallinule in Ivar’s photo, but other subspecies in Asia are brighter.
Beautiful and fascinating shots, Ivar! ( A “business” trip to Florida…all birders should be so lucky.)
Wonderful Flicker shot, Stephen.
Thanks for the kind comments. That egret shot was in large measure luck (with preparation). I didn’t see the bug until I put the image on the computer screen. Very fortunate. And what better prop to pose it with?