Birds!

[Tony]

Snapped a few yesterday.
Great blue heron that you can hardly see.

And one of the resident osprey taking a rest from fishing.

[daiv]

Osprey are great. Where are those pics from Tony?

The neatest Osprey experience I had was in Baja. We saw one sitting out on a mound of dirt down in Baja - way out on the Vizcaino peninsula. It appeared to be struggling. I thought maybe it was caught in some old fishing equipment or something as we were not far from a fishing village.

So I stopped the van and was going to go closer to investigate. It wasn't caught, but it had caught this huge green fish. So big that it could hardly fly with it. I was not close enough to get a good picture, but I did get something so you could get an idea of it:

[Peterthecactusguy]

haha, Osprey are great. I used to take pictures of them along the Delaware Bay. Near the point where the Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean meet is a small cape that used to be a military base during WWII. Their nests were always intriguing because they were so huge!

[Harriet]

Osprey in Florida have made a huge comeback...what was once a threatened bird is now everywhere you look!

No camera handy, but there was a Swallow Tail Kite hovering over my yard today...

[Tony]

Osprey are great. Where are those pics from Tony?

Those were taken at lake Perris Daiv, the same place that the western grebes on their nests were taken a few weeks ago.
By the way Harriet, I did not see any more birds sitting on nests, but there are little grey fur balls riding around on their parents back out in the middle of the lake.
I did try to get close to snap some pics, but the parents would just freak out and dive, dumping the poor little babies in the process, so I decided to just leave them alone.

[Harriet]

Thanks for trying! Maybe next time.

[Buckethead]

I rode my old Trek 900 hybrid bike out to a local city lake today. This snowy egret was kind enough to pose for me. What a cool looking bird.

[daiv]

Yeah, good shot!

[Harriet]

See a bird share a bird...

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Or two...

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[daiv]

A couple shots of a white pelican:





Hariett, how is the bottom of the snowy egret picture blurred like that? Was it standing in fog or did you do that somehow?

[Harriet]

Serendipity. If I remember correctly the bird was behind a road barrier, which is out of focus in the picture. I liked the effect so I kept the picture.

Here's another 'strange' shot of a Blue Jay gathering nesting material...

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[daiv]

Ok, sure - a depth of field type trick. It makes an interesting gradient instead of a sharp cut at the neck.

[Harriet]

Ok, sure - a depth of field type trick. It makes an interesting gradient instead of a sharp cut at the neck.

I'd like to claim that as an on purpose shot, but it was just dumb luck, and DOF!

[daiv]

Now that you know the trick, perhaps you can get a small section of guard rail that you can bring along with you for future shots!

You can find anything on the internet!

[Harriet]