It Is Red-tailed Hawk Nesting Season
Red-tailed Hawk nesting season has started in northern Utah and I found a few pairs yesterday morning that have already gotten busy with nest building.
Red-tailed Hawk nesting season has started in northern Utah and I found a few pairs yesterday morning that have already gotten busy with nest building.
March means spring to me and there are signs of spring that I look for. The first of year sighting of a White-tailed Prairie Dog is a sign of spring for me.
The calls of a Say's Phoebe are among the sounds I listen for in March and they are the first members of the tyrant flycatcher family I see each year in northern Utah.
Sage Thrashers return to northern Utah in March and it is now time for me to start listening for their songs and melodies.
When I photographed this male Ruby-crowned Kinglet a few years ago he was foraging in a sumac close to the edge of road in Box Elder County.
The Yellow-bellied Marmot in these photos should be hibernating until mid-March. I spotted it wide awake yesterday on a rocky slope in northern Utah.
It is Superb Owl Sunday so I wanted to share four of the owls that I see most frequently. Barn, Burrowing, Great Horned and Short-eared Owls are the owls that I photograph most often here in northern Utah.
After photographing this male Horned Lark on Antelope Island three days ago I decided to share a photo of him plus female and immature larks in a single post.
This morning I wanted to share a few photos of a stunning rufous Red-tailed Hawk female that I photographed over a period of a couple of years.
Two recent posts on Facebook inspired me to write about male American Kestrel chest plumage variation and to share six images of male kestrels photographed here in Utah.
As best as I can figure out what is in this photo is a cook's memorial that I found 7 years ago today out on a range in Utah's West Desert.
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.
Yesterday morning not long after sunrise I spent some time photographing a light morph, immature Ferruginous Hawk hunting for its breakfast.
Yesterday morning the first birds I spotted and photographed was a pair of adult Red-tailed Hawks side by side on a rocky ledge in early morning light.
I am always looking for Short-eared Owls in northern Utah because they are year round residents here but they are nomadic which means I don't always see them.
The highlight of my morning yesterday was when I spotted an immature light morph Ferruginous Hawk perched on a cedar post in the West Desert.
One of the Dark-eyed Juncos that I had in my viewfinder was perched on top of a rabbitbrush with seeds and fluff in its bill that turned its head towards me.
My Facebook timeline is buzzing with people posting photos of large numbers of Pine Siskins at their bird feeders across the country.
Over the past month I thought about whether I wanted to share images and tell the story of this Western Meadowlark that lost its life because of a barbed wire death trap and finally decided that the story needed to be told.
Seeing and photographing the Bushtits in northern Utah was a gift that I didn't expect yesterday and I am grateful to finally have images of them that I like.
The past couple of weeks on some of my journeys to the West Desert of Utah I have been able to have a few long distance views of Ferruginous Hawks and that has me excited.
This is a really simple photo with three features, the White-crowned Sparrow, the stump, and a very dark background.
The Ruby-crowned Kinglets, Wild Turkeys and the Woodhouse's Scrub-Jay made the very bumpy and extremely dusty ride into the mountain canyons well worth taking.
Last week I found a small herd of does and fawns on a gravel road that leads to the foothills and mountain canyons of the Stansbury Mountains that hung around long enough to be photographed.
I didn't get the photos I wanted of the sparrows perched on the rabbitbrush but I like this portrait of the young White-crowned Sparrow in front of it just as well.
Last month when I spotted a Desert Cottontail in the mountains of the West Desert I knew I wanted to take photos of the rabbit especially since it was so close that I could take portraits of it.
I don't know how many times I have said "expect the unexpected" since I began photographing birds while talking to fellow photographers.
There were a few times when the Wild Turkeys stood upright and looked right at me as I photographed them and I took full advantage of the opportunity to take portraits of the large birds.
The Rock Squirrel was grasping a sumac branch and the shrub was so close to me I wasn't even sure I was going to be able to focus on it.
I noticed immediately that the Red-tailed Hawk was on prey because I saw it tearing into something despite the grasses that were partially obstructing my view.