Rock Pigeons

I bet you didn't know that was their name. People even think of them as just pigeons (with a lower p), something to kick or step over in midtown Manhattan, but even they can help form pretty pictures if photographed with care, especially in a natural environment. Rock Pigeons have an amazing history: they are native to Ethiopia (where they live under cliff edges), domesticated by humans ages ago for their homing abilities (no GPS back then), transported to every single habitable continent by owners, released or allowed to escape there, and yet perfectly adapted to every place they've found themselves at. I've seen them as far north as Moscow, and as far south as Manila. Amazing adaptation abilities!

Yellowstone preview

While I am sorting out the rest of the pictures, here are a few random shots from my Yellowstone trip. Many more to come!

Morning on Madison River:


Thousands of buffalo in Lamar Valley:


Old favorite looking for food:


And a new favorite right after lunch (more pictures to be posted later). Wolf or coyote?

Beach Bums

I've always known that many birds breed during the summer in bird colonies, but I had thought that to find one, you had to trek up to Canada and take a raft to some sea cliff where you could watch them through binoculars at 1000x magnification. Turns out that all that's required is about an hour drive, and you can get so close to them that you can see their pimples.

To get the best shots, you have to get there before sunrise. It's a pain but this is the type of shot you then get:


The first thing you notice is the noise. Hundreds of birds are packed into a single acre of prime beach real estate. The most densely packed ones look to be the Black Skimmers - the ones with the funny beaks:






However, the most numerous are actually the Common Terns:







The terns can actually get pretty aggressive when they think you get too close to their nest home:


Although they never quite strike you, their beaks look like they can do some real damage:


Another nesting bird on that beach is Piping Plover. It's an endangered species, so it was cool to see a few of them around:




There is also a huge number of Greater Black-Backed Gulls, although I never saw where they actually nested. Here's a young one doing the morning stretch:


The other bird raising a family on the beach is the American Oystercatcher. I didn't see the nesting sites for them either, but there is plenty of them running around the beach:


This is an Oyestercatcher chick, about 4 weeks of age:


The mama Oystercatcher is trying to get some food for it:


Common Terns catch some food too:

Raising a Family on the Beach

Common Tern family:


Northern Mockingbird family:


Piping Plover family:






American Oystercatcher family:








Black Skimmers? Not yet, need another week or two!

Cute Chicks

Not a metaphor! No pun (or is it an inverse pun in this case?) intended either. These happen to be the Common Tern chicks, and they happen to be cute:

How NOT to Feed Your Kids

While I was taking some general pictures, I noticed something funny going on. The parent tern brought some fish home, but it didn't want to give it to the chick. Why not? It turned out it was the wrong chick! But the kid was hungry, and kept pursuing the adult for the food:









All the while, the right chick was standing right nearby, but was too intimidated to do anything:



Then, finally, the wrong chick was able to snatch the fish away:





But the adult wouldn't have it, and tried to pry the fish away even after the wrong chick had swallowed it!









In case you are wondering, the chick won :)