Five Bird Photos From Christmas Day 2020
Much to my delight I was able to photograph some birds on Christmas Day at Farmington Bay WMA yesterday morning.
Much to my delight I was able to photograph some birds on Christmas Day at Farmington Bay WMA yesterday morning.
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.
If you can't be with friends, family or loved ones this year because of the pandemic I hope that you will be able to talk to them and wish them Happy Holidays on the phone or via video chat.
I was totally unaware on that April morning that I would be photographing a Belted Kingfisher family for several months.
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.
Early in December while at Farmington Bay WMA I was able to photograph and take videos of Northern Shovelers feeding on Glover Pond.
During the winter there are times I am able to photograph Barn Owls in flight during the day when the snow is deep and the temps are bitter cold.
It tickles me that Pantone® picked these colors this year and once again I am reminded how the colors we see in nature brighten and add inspiration to our lives.
I love to photograph birds on the wing. It doesn't matter if my subject is as small as a hummingbird, as large as an eagle, as slow as a gliding pelican, or as fast as a stooping falcon as long as it is a bird.
I love photographing gulls. Whether they are feeding, resting, preening, fighting, calling, or in flight gulls are one of my favorite bird species to have in my viewfinder.
Two years and one day ago I only photographed two birds on a trip out into the West Desert and this light morph Ferruginous Hawk made the trip well worth the journey out into the cold.
I'm concerned for our wild American Mink and have begun to wonder of the coronavirus could be passed to the other native mustelids here in Utah.
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.
When I got back home and uploaded the images I took of the drake Common Goldeneye I could see that his bill had pigment issues and that it wasn't a white feather stuck on his bill.
I have a backlog of raptor images I took earlier this week but I wanted to share one of a species that some people hate or many bird photographers prefer to ignore, the European Starling.
Three days ago I had one minute with a beautiful adult female American Kestrel and her partially eaten prey at Farmington Bay WMA.
Think carefully before you make a trip to Utah to photograph our overwintering Bald Eagles in the valley. The inversions are awful and can be life threatening.
Today I am focusing on an adult male Northern Harrier that I had in my viewfinder for a few seconds yesterday that was on the wing over the marsh.
Typically I have a personal rule about having eye contact with my subject and I also want a catch light but to get this coot photo I had to break my own bird photography rules.
I was only going to share this image today but as I processed this photo I thought about all the times I have photographed American Kestrels on this same exact post over the years.
All three of the Hooded Mergansers were close to me because there was a shelf of ice that prevented them from swimming out into the middle of the pond.
Finding two uncommon birds this week at the same olive tree really has me buzzed and to finally see a Rusty Blackbird has made me feel like jumping over the moon.
I found an immature Red-tailed Hawk in the marsh at Farmington Bay WMA yesterday and spent 28 minutes photographing it including when a Northern Harrier harassed it.
Some winters here in the Salt Lake Valley I see quite a lot Common Mergansers while in other years I only see a few. I'm hoping that this winter I will see plenty of these beautiful, sleek diving ducks.
In 2018 fossil hunters in Siberia found a extremely well preserved bird seven meters down a tunnel in permafrost that turned out to be a 46,000 year old Horned Lark.
I saw a few harriers on the wing yesterday at Farmington Bay WMA and I was able to take a few photos of a female Northern Harrier that still had frost on her nape.
There are days I spend as much time looking at the scenery as I do photographing birds because I think we live on an amazingly beautiful planet.
I'm anxious to start photographing the ducks I see close to home during the winter here in the Salt Lake Valley and from what I understand a few Common Goldeneyes have shown up.
Yesterday morning not long after sunrise I spent some time photographing a light morph, immature Ferruginous Hawk hunting for its breakfast.
Ten days ago I found and photographed this adult male Rough-legged Hawk as it perched on a Russian Olive tree at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge when I was heading home.