Crunch time!

  As a wildlife photographer, this time of year is like Christmas! Birds that wintered south are back, babies are being born and it happens way too fast! Very exciting and I can catch up on my sleep later.....
So on Friday, I stopped over to see my owl friends. Not much was going on so I headed down to my favorite spot. My say's phoebe friend was waiting for me.....

 I started to hike around the lake and found this great blue heron. He was balancing on one leg and having a good scratch with the other foot. Looks kind of awkard to me.

    There's a few pairs of double crested cormorants nesting on the island. Here, you can actually see the double crests on the head...very cool!

   As I continued around I caught some movement in a nearby tree. How cute! It's a ruby crowned kinglet. Was tough to get a shot as he never stopped moving......

Not much else was going on so I headed up to Prospect park. As I drove in past the first lake I could see an osprey circling the lake. I quickly parked the car, grabbed my camera and took off running.What a show! There was a pair of them and they circled for over 15 minutes. I was hoping to get a pic of them catching a fish but no luck.....

Some crows showed up and started dive bombing the osprey. He didn't seem to care and finally the crows moved on.

A few birders showed up and we enjoyed the osprey together. Then they mentioned there were some black crown night herons nearby. I easily found them and grabbed a few pics. I had not seen any adults here before but had seen some juveniles last fall. So now that I know where they hang out, I'll be back to check on them.

On the same lake were a couple of western grebes....

and there were a few yellowlegs. Not sure if they are greater or lesser yellowlegs. The birders were trying to figure it out but never came to any conclusions. So it's still a mystery.

There were also a few hood mergansers. This guy had caught a gigantic crayfish. Bummer that he was pretty far out, so wasn't able to get the best pic......

Whew! So much action on that one lake. So cool! I finally pulled myself away and headed over to find my new owl friend. He was just chillin and enjoying the day...

It was lunchtime, so I headed home. Had lunch, cleaned up the house and grabbed a quick nap before heading over to see my owl friends in the evening. Didn't get any good pics but did see momma Cher fly by with some food in her talons. We waited for a bit to see if was gonna feed her chick. But it got too dark so we headed home.


I got by butt up early this morning to go see the owls. The owlet was sleeping. Sonny and Cher were nearby also napping. I took a walk around the lake and when I got back, Cher was now sitting close to the nest. I could see she was getting ready to fly back to her favorite spot and was able to grab a decent flight pic. OMG! Those wings are just spectacular,huh?

I decided to go see if I could find another GHO nest. The other day I had heard about a nest and the owlets were out of the nest already. So with fairly sketchy directions I went searching. I was walking along when I heard a very familiar sound. It took a minute for my brain to register the sound. It was the sound of a baby GHO asking for food. So I looked toward the sound and found him! How cute!!

I was being respectful but I seemed to scare this guy. wow! He puffed up big time. I had not seen this before. When my owl friends have left the nest, they already knew me so didn't get scared when I took pics of them. Very interesting.....

Of course I knew mom had to be nearby. Sure enough I looked up and there she was. She kept a close eye on me. So I let her know I meant no harm to her baby.

I searched the tree mom was sitting in and found a sibling. So darn cute!

I felt so blessed to have found the owls so easily. They are now on my radar, so I'll check in regularly.

I finally pulled myself away and headed home. I stopped to see the dipper on the way. Here's dad with some breakfast for the kids.....

Whew! I love this time of year! Busy, busy,busy!!!!!