Winter Great Blue Heron On Ice
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.
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.
I did find a sub-adult Bald Eagle resting on the ice on the last leg of the refuge loop and even though it was at a distance I wanted to photograph it because of the marshy habitat it was in.
Yesterday I shared a photo of a Bald Eagle resting on the icy marsh at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and this morning I am sharing a Canada Goose doing exactly the same thing.
Three days ago I photographed an adult Bald Eagle resting on the frost-covered, icy marsh at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge in northern Utah.
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.
After reviewing the images I took of the gull at home on a larger screen I was happy to see that it was a Herring Gull, gulls we only see in the winter here.
These foggy Great Blue Heron photos are probably the foggiest images in my portfolio and despite that I truly like how they turned out.
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.
I thought I was going to go home without any frame filling bird photos until this European Starling flew in and landed next to the water.
I know some people don't get excited about gulls but I do and I was thrilled two days ago at Bear River MBR when I spotted and photographed my first Herring Gulls of this winter season.
Yesterday morning I spent time focusing on photographing Great Blue Herons on the frozen marshes of Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge.
I always get excited about what the first bird will be that I see at the beginning of the new year and for two years in a row now my first birds of the year have been American Crows.
The light was low, big flakes of snow were falling and the ice was covered in fluffy snow so that allowed me to take photos of a few birds that looked like they were posed on a blank, white canvas.
I especially enjoy watching American Coots in winter when they try to use their large greenish feet to walk on ice because that can be rather comical and I love to laugh.
At the end of January I had a few opportunities to photograph some American Crows in nice light on snow and ice at Farmington Bay WMA. I jumped at the opportunity of course.
So, even though I didn't get great photos yesterday I was glad to get out and photograph a Barn Owl, Bald Eagle and these California and Ring-billed Gulls.
When the clouds cleared out yesterday morning there were birds to be found and today I am focusing my daily post on the White-faced Ibis that overwinter in the marshes of Farmington Bay WMA that I photographed there yesterday.
After miles and miles and miles of travel yesterday my best images were of an adult Great Blue Heron on ice with frost flowers in the frame.
At first I thought the single Red-breasted Merganser was a female until I noticed the white patches of feathers behind its neck on its sides and then I realized that the merganser was a male because females do not typically have those white patches.
I removed the "Just A" from the title for this post and added "Focusing On A" instead. Why? Because I was focused on observing and photographing this Ring-billed Gull drinking from an icy pond and I'm happy to say that I was.
So... I did get out into the field yesterday but heavy fog got in the way of being able to see birds and the great scenery I know I could see at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge.
On January 2nd I noticed a Ring-billed Gull coming in for a landing on an iced over pond that was missing a leg and foot and I wondered how well it would handle the slippery ice while attempting to land on it.
While photographing a California Gull on ice two days ago I was reminded of how well these gulls survive the bitter cold we have here at times during the winter even when the ponds, lakes and rivers freeze over.
Seeing a few flocks of Tundra Swans in flight two days in northern Utah was a reminder that these big, white swans have already begun their migration to their breeding grounds on the tundra of northern Canada and Alaska.
Yesterday the American Crows hung around with the Bald Eagles, Herring, California and Ring-billed Gulls to feast on those invasive fish which gave me an opportunity to photograph this one standing on a dead carp.
The lives of these Great Blue Herons sure are different when you compare December in Utah to December in Florida.
I've written before that I love American Coots and I guess that will never change, I will stop for coots any time I see them, I will photograph them and enjoy their antics.
I was excited and delighted to spot and photograph a coyote running on the ice of the Great Salt Lake a few days ago in the golden light just after dawn.
These portraits of bison bulls drinking from an iced over puddle were taken with my Nikon D500, my 500mm VR lens with a teleconverter attached from inside a vehicle.
On January 3rd I photographed two unusual Ring-billed Gulls at my local pond in Salt Lake County, today I am sharing one of those gulls, the runty, second winter Ring-billed Gull.