Crow

[cross-posted]

Common Loon

My very favorite kind of bird. More here, including great sound files. Large here.

[cross-posted]

Osprey

With a nice, fresh trout in tow. Larger version here. Last year's Osprey here.

[cross-posted]

Song Sparrow

Could this guy be this guy? Same neighborhood, one year later.

[cross-posted]

Wood Duck, Drake

He's even more beautiful close up, with spots, stripes, iridescences, the works.
[cross-posted]

Hooded Mergansers on the Wing

Adult male and female. They left town about a week ago, just before the ice melted. Large version here.

[cross-posted]

Exit, Stage North

Canadian Geese on the move

[cross-posted]

Wild Turkeys

I shot this yesterday morning a few miles from my house. Moments later the turkeys scattered and flew into the trees, disappearing in like three seconds flat. Low-res enlargement here.

[cross-posted]

Hooded Mergansers

Hooded Mergansers are small, diving, fish-eating ducks. Here an immature male is followed by an adult female. One of these weeks I'll post a shot of the adult male, who is the real beauty of this species. See a low-resolution enlargement here.

[cross-posted]

Moments Later...

Downy Woodpecker beats a retreat.

Downy Woodpecker

Male, Eastern Race
[cross-posted]

Black-Capped Chickadee

[cross-posted]

Descent of Goose

[cross-posted]

Blue Crow

On a recent morning with an attractive dead thing in the road. This is relevant.

Double-Crested Cormorants

This pair of juvenile Cormorants put down at our lake for a day about two weeks ago, when we had some early snowsqualls. Their outer plumage is not entirely waterproof, so maybe they needed to dry off? Or maybe they were tired and hungry. Whatever the case, they are not commonly seen here. My last sighting was a few years ago, when three adults migrating through in the spring stopped in for a quick feed. The adults are a deep, lustrous black. They swim really low in the water, more in the water than on it. They look kind of like big black snakes coming down the lake. This species takes forever to get airborne. It's quite a production. It takes them like half a mile to gain fifty feet of altitude, then they turn back and do huge circle on top of circle on top of circle overhead until they can clear the hills and blow on out of Dodge. Context shot here. Enlargement of this shot here.

NSYNC

I photographed this small gaggle of Canada Geese rising from my lake in this morning's light snowstorm. In a sequence of about a dozen shots I got as they circled away from and then back over me, they look all out of sorts until the shots taken within a few hundred yards of this one, when they get good and synchronized and ready for a long haul -- probably to a pond two or three miles away, as this is likely a resident group. But they'll arrive there in style, dammit.

Swallow Chase

The Barn Swallows left our lake for warmer climes about a week ago. It's a very sad time here.

Workin' It

Bee on a Coneflower. Alternate take here.

Lakescape

A Barn Swallow patrols his clan's airspace on a recent foggy morning.

Turkey Vulture

More info on the species here. (Check out that head.)