Today we have the second set of bird photos taken by Joe Dickinson on a recent visit to the Merced National Wildlife Refuge in in the California Central Valley near Los Banos (the first set is here). Joe’s captions are indented.
This great blue heron (Ardea herodias) looks to me like it has some blood on its beak. Probably scored a gopher or mouse recently.
This is a yellowlegs, probably lesser (Tringa flavipes).
A congregation of coots (Fulica americana). I just decided that that is the appropriate collective term for coots.
This and two following, more sandhill cranes (Antigone canadensis).
This gives an idea of the number of geese (Anser caerulescens and Chen rossii). To make a decent photo, I had to crop this to about 1/3 of the line.
And more geese all the way down.
Beautiful Joe! And: Lucky you!
Reblogged this on The Logical Place.
Gorgeous photos! Thanks.
Great photos. The Merced National Wildlife Refuge seems to be a wonderful place!
Wonderful! I notice what look like white fronted geese mixed in with the snow geese in the last two frames.
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Greater_White-fronted_Goose/id
Exactly like a Peter Scott painting!
http://peterscottprints.com/images/peter-scott-print-snow-geese-in-california.jpg
Nice.
Yeah, but it needs the mountains. We did have that where we viewed the geese near Delta, Utah. I was going to show an example, but I can’t figure out how to add a photo to a comment. Can someone explain?
I think, if you upload the jpg to a site on the web, then place the link to it in your comment, it should show up.
Yeah, I think you’re right. We do usually see them there although in much smaller numbers than the white species.
Same here on the snake. The ratio last year was about 40 to 1.
And I thought we had a lot of Canadian geese. Nice pics.
It’s no goose – but it is Snow geese…
Merced NWR is a fantastic birding destination. Love the images.
I have just devised an “appropriate collective term for coots”: cooties!
On second thought, that is really more of term describing a group of coots. I will leave through the back door.
Nice photos…those geese numbers are unbelievable. Thanks.
Lovely work as always, Joe. Thanks!