Birds that I find in the field, photograph and share the stories behind the images.
Birds aren't always neat looking, feathers wear, birds molt and young birds transitioning from their juvenal plumage into adult plumage can look quite disheveled or messy.
Thousands upon thousands of Black-necked Stilts make the marshes at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge in northern Utah their home during their breeding season.
This image kind of looks like I photographed a two-headed juvenile Western Kingbird but it is really an optical illusion.
Some Tundra Swans migrate from the arctic tundra using the Great Basin hub of the Pacific flyway and huge flocks of them spend the winter here.
Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge was calling me yesterday morning and I answered that call and photographed several White-faced Ibis from the auto tour route.
I have my ears and my eyes to thank for finding the Yellow Warblers and their young foraging near a creek in a canyon.
As a bird photographer who spends enormous amounts of time in the field with my feathered subjects I am able to see avian behaviors that other people don't see who aren't focused on birds.
This Great Blue Heron wandered past me one December morning at Fort De Soto County Park's north beach on a gray, windy day and because it was close I simply had to take a photo of the large wading bird.
I do not believe that this bird was one of the pair of adult Red-naped Sapsuckers I photographed feeding the chick in the nesting cavity, his bib and breast markings were different from the other adult birds.
There was a tribe of juvenile Black-billed Magpies on Antelope Island State Park yesterday down near White Rock Bay that were wandering around in the area near the Buffalo Point trailhead
While stopped at a gate at Red Rock lakes NWR a Tree Swallow flew in and landed on a fence post so close that I wasn't sure I was going to be able to focus on it but I had to try.
Some of the birds I see often while at the Lower Lake of Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Montana are Savannah Sparrows and I love to photograph them there.
Two days ago I watched and photographed as April Olson who is a volunteer at Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah release a rehabbed Burrowing Owl and it was very exciting for me because I've never been to a release before
I was pleased and relieved to see the surviving Red-tailed Hawk juvenile perched on a corral close to the edge of the road and looking well fed and healthy.
I will probably never see and photograph so many leucistic Eared Grebes again in my life time as I did yesterday on the Great Salt Lake.
I didn't have the good fortune to photograph another Cassin's Finch on my trip so I am glad I took the time to take photos of this one looking around his home in the Centennial Valley of Montana.
I know how blessed I am to be able to see and photograph the spellbinding spectacle of thousands and thousands of Wilson's Phalaropes lift off and take flight en masse
While I looked around four days ago I saw this Bank Swallow resting on a fence that hangs over the Red Rock River and could not resist photographing it with the blue water below and behind it.
There were several fledglings on the rails but I liked how these two young American Crows were relatively close together and both looking the same direction, up the rails and to the north
I simply don't know what caused this kind of feather damage and I hope that someone can give me a better idea of what was going on with this Swainson's Hawk.
Although photographing the Red-naped Sapsuckers at the nesting cavity has been frustrating at times it has also been very rewarding to observe all the action of the sapsucker family.
Today's post is just a simple bird. A sky blue Mountain Bluebird perched on a rustic pine fence railing taken on a bright beautiful morning in the Centennial Valley of Montana.
Jackpot and frustrations... I'll explain the jackpot first and get to the frustrations later about the Targhee National Forest Red-naped Sapsucker feeding its young.
Red-tailed Hawks were my most photographed species yesterday morning in the Centennial Valley of southwestern Montana and I had fun with them.
The Short-eared Owl was perched on the post and slowly turned its head to look around as if it was surveying the beauty of the valley it had made its home in.
A few more changes in the Fifty-Eighth Supplement to the AOS Check-list have to do with dabbling ducks and "white geese".
This male Red-naped Sapsucker was photographed last year in the high Uintas, a mountain range that is east of Salt Lake City and the Wasatch Mountains I can see from where I live.
I needed time out with the birds yesterday and this juvenile Red-tailed Hawk helped me to relax, breathe and remember that things have a way of working out.
I photographed this preening Ring-billed Gull in a snow storm in January of this year at a pond near where I live and it was pretty chilly that day.
Just because Willets weren't split this year doesn't mean they won't be split in the future, who knows what changes will be made a year from now.