I’m not doing terribly well on cleaning out the backlog, partially because there’s no real subject/theme among most of the pics, so I’m just throwing up a couple for the time being, recent avian images.
A few days back, The Girlfriend and I did a pass through Goose Creek State Park in the late morning, turning up surprisingly little – the place seemed almost abandoned by all wildlife. A few woodpeckers were flitting around, and I finally managed to get a few sharp frames of one, this red-headed woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus.) Annnddd that really was it for the park, save for a distant and perched osprey.
Not a whole lot better luck a couple days later, as a male yellow-bellied sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius) did a brief visit to the yard, not coming out into the open very well.
I’ve seen very few of these and would love to get better pics, but my experiences have all been brief and at a fair distance – this is the best I’ve gotten of their color pattern. You might think, with that name, that their bellies would be, I don’t know, yellow or something, xanthic maybe, but apparently they only occasionally sport some yellowish hues thereon. Leave it to ornithologists to give it a name like an old west epithet.
Nearly all woodpeckers that visit make some kind of sound that helps indicate that they’re around, but I only knew this one was there because I spotted the black-and-white wing patterns as it flew in, and it was totally silent as it foraged for a minute or so before flying off.
Unlike this red-shouldered hawk (Buteo lineatus,) which announced its presence unmistakably as soon as I hove into view this morning, perhaps telling me to get lost.
There’s a pair that definitely is laying claim to the area, though near as we can tell they’re not actually using the nest they were working on earlier – again. They did this last year, beginning work in the late winter but then ditching that, and we’re not sure if they decide against it because of our presence, or some other factor. I mean, we were around when they started, so it’s not like they suddenly discovered how close we were, but perhaps the female is a lot more wary than the male and informed him that the neighbors were, shall we say, not their kind of people. Birds. Whatever. Which is not to say that they won’t still hunt in the backyard.
And now I feel bad, because the next two pics are of a species without a color in its name – could have had a thing going in this post, more of that subject/theme idea, but noooo…
The other evening as the sun dipped behind the trees, the wood ducks (Aix sponsa) were making a raid and I fired off a few frames of their frenzy. Normally this would be grounds for discarding, but I kinda liked the surreal action aspect, which does indeed suggest their frenetic activity when they finally decide to descend on the corn. And another:
This is even more abstract; while the female with her back to us is obvious, there are the heads of two males blurred so badly they produce only a bare hint of color smearing in the frame, the residues of wiping the paintbrush dry. This is high fart, this is. Or maybe just a funky effect that struck my fancy. You decide – I could expound on some emotional, existential, metaphorical aspects but such things make me itch.
That’s six more cleared out. Only, um, thirty-two more to go? I’m not counting, and they’ll get here when they get here.