I had my most successful day photographing the birds who call the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge home in early April, 2010. In all, I photographed nine species in four hours of roving the wildlife drive, lookouts and trails. I know I blogged about this last month but felt these photos deserved another look. I have added more information about each bird I photographed in the essay and a link or two for you to find even more information. Hope you will click on the collage above to enjoy the Birds of Montezuma Photo Essay.
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Thanks for an interesting essay Scott.
Your photos of the birds are really good. -But they seem a little blurry here on the blog. I wonder why… Maybe it is because you let WordPress reduce the image size?
I have seen number 2,3,4 and 7 in Denmark. Don’t know if the others visit Denmark occasionally.
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No, it’s blurry. I reduced the photos too much when putting this mosaic together. Ran out of time to fix it once I noticed but I will!
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I really enjoyed your photo essay, Scott, and learned quite a bit that I didn’t know about a few of the species – so thanks! Congrats on having such a successful photo day – those ARE the BEST, aren’t they?? AND, they make up for the days we get skunked! Nice job, all around!
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You’re welcome and thank you, Tracy. Oy, I get skunked enough so a day like this had to be celebrated.
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I’m especially glad you put this up because (a) I unaccountably missed the first post on the subject and (b) I learned something about flickers that I did not know. The photo essay is very well done, Scott.
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You missed the first one? Glad I did the photo essay then. 🙂
I have to give a nod to Amy on the Flicker information. She wrote an article called The Flying Anteater which included one of her excellent illustrations. Thanks, Amy!
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I haven’t had the chance to thoroughly read your essay, but I skimmed through enough to know that I will go back to it, and I’m interested in figuring out whether I could get a trip to the Montezuma Wildlife Refuge in this summer.
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After you get time to read it, let me know what you think of it, Karma. Just remember, a trip to a swamp in summer means bugs…lots of them. Be prepared!
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That is an excellent presentation, Scott! Great photos and informative narrative.
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Thank you, Terry. Your blog educates me everyday about wildflowers.
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Very nice, Scott. You know what I like in your collage? The last photo of the turkey vulture…how you didn’t show the entire bird. You just taught me something here. That sometimes you don’t need the whole view. That teaser of the turkey vulture really engaged my eye. Of course I have turkey vultures on the brain this week. We had two feasting upon road kill up the road. I insisted that Barry turn around so we could take a picture but…had left the darn camera at home. Can you imagine? I’ll bet YOU never leave your camera at home.
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I leave my camera home a lot but I always have my iPhone. Takes surprisingly good photos. Turkey vultures are amazing birds and do a thankless job. I would hate to know what the Earth would smell like without them and other animals that specialize in cleaning up carrion.
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Oh wow! These are very, very nice! I really like the collage and especially like the photo essay. A wonderful concept to feature each bird with information. Northern Flicker and Tree Swallow are my favorites and I wish I could capture sharp images of these like you had. How fortunate you were to photograph all of the birds! I really do like this concept of a photo essay. 🙂
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Thank you, Anna. Glad you liked the photo essay. You and Preston go a step beyond the photo essay with your wonderful videos.
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Great photo essay and great photos too. I love all the birds you took photographs of, very beautiful.
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That is amazing! I am so wanting to photograph birds more. My present project is a sunbird nesting right outside the house!
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It must have been great fun to search for the birds, – to find them – and finaly catch the moment with your lense. Great photos and essay, interesting reading,- very useful. My favorite photo is White-breasted Nuthatchs, because its head is easy to study as the whole photo is very well lighted,- and because the background is decorative. The Northern Flickers is beautiful, I wish I had one in my garden to study. You are lucky to have this possibility.
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Scott, amazing closeup images, thanks for the photo essay. It’s interesting to know that song sparrows learn their songs from other birds, I didn’t realize that they have memorized tunes.
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