Families: Ardeidae, Ciconiidae, Phoenicopteridae, Threskiorithidae
Wading birds are long legged, long necked, long billed birds that include herons, egrets, flamingos, ibis, bitterns, spoonbills, and storks. Many of the wading birds forage by wading in shallow water but not all do that exclusively, some wading birds forage in pastures, wet meadows, on beaches, fresh and saltwater shorelines, grassy slopes, mudflats or from vegetation in marshes.
Today I wanted to share some of the Christmas Day bird photos I have taken through the years out in the field and close to home.
When I found this Great Blue Heron resting on a man made goose nest yesterday morning at Farmington Bay WMA I knew I wanted to photograph it.
Great Blue Herons are very patient hunters and there are times when they are hunting that they move so slowly that it is barely perceptible.
Three days ago I spotted an immature Great Blue Heron resting at the edge of the water at Farmington Bay WMA and couldn't resist taking photos of it.
The name "Great Blue Heron" has always seemed off to me because these large herons are much more gray than they are blue.
Is one of these immature Great Blue Heron images more visually appealing than the other? That depends on the personal tastes of the person viewing them.
The stark contrast of the white plumage of the Snowy Egret against the darkness of shadows on the vegetation and water made the egret appear to glow.
September is a marvelous time for photographing Snowy Egrets in the freshwater marshes that surround the Great Salt Lake.
It was a terrific "season opener" for me yesterday thanks to my keen observation skills at Farmington Bay WMA with a Green Heron, one-eared Long-tailed Weasel and a one-eyed American White Pelican.
I'm actually more than a touch fascinated by the Great Blue Herons I see, observe and photograph in the higher altitudes of the Wasatch Mountains.
When I found this Great Blue Heron standing on a rock surrounded by the fast moving waters of a mountain creek I knew I wanted photos of it.
One of the birds I found that summer morning was a Great Egret perched on a stump that the waves of the Gulf had deposited on the shore of the beach.
Three days ago I spotted my first of the year Snowy Egret at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge when two egrets flew out of a ditch on the way to the auto tour loop.
This Green Heron was photographed not long after I first started focusing on and photographing birds while I still lived in Florida.
When White-faced Ibis are in breeding plumage it is easy to see how they got their common name, in nonbreeding plumage, not so much.
This may have been my last chance this winter to photograph a Great Blue Heron on ice so I am glad I took photos of it as it landed and cautiously walked around on the ice.
About two weeks ago I was able to photograph two Black-crowned Night Herons, one was immature and the other was an adult.
I spent some time yesterday morning focused on photographing an immature Black-crowned Night Heron at the dawn of the day in the marsh at Farmington Bay WMA.
The Great Blue Herons were hunkered down in the rushes with the warmth of the sunlight on them but they still looked cold.
These Great Blue Heron images also help me to "see" what this species would have looked like as they lived their lives in primordial swamps, estuaries and marshes hundreds of thousands of years ago.
These foggy Great Blue Heron photos are probably the foggiest images in my portfolio and despite that I truly like how they turned out.
I had so much fun photographing Reddish Egrets when I lived in Florida and could see them nearly every time I went to Fort De Soto County Park's north beach.
There were plenty of Great Blue Herons to photograph yesterday morning at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and I was more than happy to take photos of them.
When I lived in Florida Tricolored Herons were among my favorite wading birds to photograph and I found them in many different types of habitats.
Yesterday morning I spent time focusing on photographing Great Blue Herons on the frozen marshes of Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge.
On that bright winter afternoon one of my best avian subjects was this Great Blue Heron standing in water with a bank of fresh, white snow behind it.
I was thrilled to have this big, white wading bird where I could take photos of it in what was on that day a winter wonderland.
Because I arrived at twilight that morning and had a clear sky I knew that I could take photos of the Great Blue Heron with the blue colored Earth's Shadow and pink Belt of Venus behind it.
American Bitterns can be very hard to spot at times since they blend into their habitat so well because of their cryptic plumage patterns and because they are so skulky.
These nine Snowy Egret photos are just a fraction of the images I took of a small flock of these snowy, white birds with golden slippers yesterday morning on the marshes of Farmington Bay WMA.