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Today’s photos come from Paul Edelman of Vanderbilt University. His narrative and captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Some more grist for your bird mill. The most interesting birds that winter in Nashville tend to be the larger ones—water fowl, raptors, and woodpeckers. On a couple of recent visits to our local parks I have seen good examples of all of these. These pictures were taken with a Nikon D500 and Nikkor 500mm f5.6 lens. Much of this birding is done with my eagle-eye wife, Suzanna Sherry, who manages to spot many birds that I would miss otherwise!
On the water fowl front I saw a Northern Shoveler (Spatula clypeata), a Green-winged Teal (Anas crecca) and a Gadwall ( Mareca strepera ) in a marsh off of the Cumberland River on the TSU campus. On Radnor Lake, one of my favorite spots, I got this picture of a Hooded Merganser (Lophodytes cucullatus) sitting on a log with a Wood Duck (Aix sponsa).
In the woods of Radnor we found a Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) eating this squirrel. While watching the hawk we noticed the Barred Owl (Strix varia) in a near-by tree.
In Shelby Bottoms we saw this Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus) watching over the park and this pair of Northern Flickers (Colaptes auratus).
The barred owl looks almost as if it’s thinking, “How can you EAT at this hour?” toward the hawk.
Excellent photos. Looks like there’s good birding around Nashville. I’m intrigued at the close proximity of the Redtail and Barred Owl and wonder how they feel about each other. Since one is diurnal and the other nocturnal, perhaps they don’t see themselves as competitors. Both will hunt squirrels, which I find somewhat surprising, as neither is that big a bird of prey and squirrels are feisty and have large sharp teeth. I wonder whether it’s sometimes the bird that gets the worst of it.
Excellent pictures! Thank you for sharing.
Wonderful photos! Thanks!
You had some fruitful outings indeed… these are splendid! Thanks, Paul and Suzanna!
Nice ducks you got there. I love it when flickers fan out their tail- it’s a real cool look. I don’t know what it communicates. Sometimes they do it while eating off our suet holder. Thanks for the submission.
PS: I also have that lens- a great wildlife lens for sure!