Two Days at the Sacramento NWR (Image Heavy)

[stealthman_1]

Only an hour and a half away and I've never been here. Boy, that's just dumb. I had a wonderful two half days (one afternoon, one morning) and can't wait to go back though the season is winding down for migratory birds.
I was pretty surprised, the first bird I saw proper in the reserve was a Belted Kingfisher...Probably be a while before I see another!

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The six mile auto tour starts off with a whole bunch of these...:biggrin:

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But then gets right down to business.
Killdeer

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Red-Winged Blackbird

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A whole lot of pheasants are here...

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And some little yappy birds I don't know!:tongue:

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Then right to the waders...I can't find this one in my stuff...

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One of my favorites...and lots of 'em!
Cinnamon Teal
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Another pretty one...
Green-Winged Teal
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Goofy Blackbirds

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Pretty Yellow Ones...

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And Puffy Yellow Ones!

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Then we get my favorites!
American Bittern

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Double Crested Cormorant

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In Flight...I love these guys!

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Of course the Great Egret!
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Lots of Greater White Fronted Geese

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One ripping big Bald Eagle...I didn't get any good shots of him today, but I drove under him sitting in a tree last night and he was HUGE. Light was non-existant at that point so I didn't even try to squeeze off a frame.

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And lastly, and man there were a ton of these guys...
The Great American Mosquito!
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[lmatney]

It looks like you had fun Tim. Nice series, and thanks for sharing.

 

[Baxter]

Great series Tim. Looks like an amazing place to shoot. The bird with the long pink legs is a black-necked stilt. The puffy yellow bird is a meadowlark. I am stumped by the bird with the black head and yellow throat patch. Should be easy to identify but I can't make a definite ID. Hopefully someone else who knows western birds will have one.

 

[wild life]

What a nice collection, Tim. It's always great to find new areas especially if they teem with wildlife. The yappy little bird looks like a Marsh Wren and the bird with the yellow throat is a Yellow-Rumped Warbler. Well done.

 

[lightp8nter]

Good stuff Tim. I really like the bird with the camouflaged "eyes". Very cool. Looking forward to joining you out there.

 

[Baxter]

Nice ID on the warbler Landy. It is an Audubon's variant of the yellow-rumped, which I've never seen. Very cool.

 

[stealthman_1]

:biggrin::biggrin:

It looks like you had fun Tim. Nice series, and thanks for sharing.

Thanks, I had a great time. We slept up, out of the valley so there were great stars to gaze at as well.

Great series Tim. Looks like an amazing place to shoot. The bird with the long pink legs is a black-necked stilt. The puffy yellow bird is a meadowlark. I am stumped by the bird with the black head and yellow throat patch. Should be easy to identify but I can't make a definite ID. Hopefully someone else who knows western birds will have one.

Much appreciated and thanks for the IDs. I could not find that stilt for the life of me. I'm going to go back and retrace my searches last night and figure out what I was doing wrong.

What a nice collection, Tim. It's always great to find new areas especially if they teem with wildlife. The yappy little bird looks like a Marsh Wren and the bird with the yellow throat is a Yellow-Rumped Warbler. Well done.

Thanks for looking and the solid ID. Now I need to go soften up the sharpening in that one and the Kingfisher...oops. Bought the Silver Efex bundle (and of course I haven't used Silver Efex yet...) and am playing with the sharpening tools....badly.

Good stuff Tim. I really like the bird with the camouflaged "eyes". Very cool. Looking forward to joining you out there.

Thanks Nate. Bittern are awesome. I hadn't seen one in many years, they make very cool vocalizations and are just all around bizarre. I saw several of them. It always cracks me up because to me they stand out like a sore thumb...maybe that's why there aren't too many of them???:biggrin:

I definitely need to get out there more, the sound of birds everywhere was very calming. Just before dark, thursday night, I heard this giant whining in the distance towards the Sutter Buttes, I couldn't figure out what it was. Aircraft? No. Rail? No. Then it appeared, a cloud of geese on their way to the Artic. It took a while for them to get far away enough for most of the cloud to fit in the viewfinder, I did a quick sample count and there are well over a thousand geese in the cloud. Cool!

 

[ArtO]

Great series. I must have been a wonderful time.

 

[sla12]

Great set Tim! Love the bittern.

 

[dallas1351]

Great shots, love that rabbit.

Dallas

 

[JPS]

Superb serie, Tim ! What a profitable day !

What F-lens did you use ?

BTW, how come all the Exif datas are gone ? I checked my images, which, yet PP'ed thru NX2 and Photoshop, first saved as *.TIF, then PP'ed a bit more and saved as *.JPG, still have their Exif datas... Looks like something in your process deletes them :frown: !

:smile:
J-P.

 

[jeriann3]

looks like you've found a bit of Heaven! Great shots... I've never seen a neat mosquita shot before! The Kildeer and Pheasant are really fantastic too!

 

[sarahbee]

The small bird with the bright yellow throat patch is a yellow-rumped warbler:

http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/154/overview/Yellow-rumped_Warbler.aspx

Great series! Love that shot of the bittern. There are so many great places to go birding in that area. But apparently some good mosquito repellent is in order, too. That mosquito shot is really cool. Creepy, but cool.

--Sarah

 

[stealthman_1]

Great series. I must have been a wonderful time.

Indeed it was. I think I'm going back up tomorrow as we've got a nice coastal breeze that keeps the air real clear.

Great set Tim! Love the bittern.

Thanks, they are just too cool.:smile:

Great shots, love that rabbit.

Dallas

Thanks, they are so funny and there are a whole lot of 'em on the reserve, they just run everywhere.

Superb serie, Tim ! What a profitable day !

What F-lens did you use ?

BTW, how come all the Exif datas are gone ? I checked my images, which, yet PP'ed thru NX2 and Photoshop, first saved as *.TIF, then PP'ed a bit more and saved as *.JPG, still have their Exif datas... Looks like something in your process deletes them :frown: !

:smile:
J-P.

These are a mix of D7000 with 200f2+2XIII and 600 f4VR with 1.4x mounted. I ran these through the stuff that comes in the Silver Efex bundle, don't know why it stripped the EXIF or if that's normal.

looks like you've found a bit of Heaven! Great shots... I've never seen a neat mosquita shot before! The Kildeer and Pheasant are really fantastic too!

Thanks very much! Someone here a few weeks ago posted a really nice Killdeer shot and I always wanted a good one, I see them a lot locally, and you can get fairly close, but I've never been able to point 850mm at one before.:biggrin: I was surprised at how man pheasants were there. Got to get some flight shots next time.

The small bird with the bright yellow throat patch is a yellow-rumped warbler:

http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/154/overview/Yellow-rumped_Warbler.aspx

Great series! Love that shot of the bittern. There are so many great places to go birding in that area. But apparently some good mosquito repellent is in order, too. That mosquito shot is really cool. Creepy, but cool.

--Sarah

Thanks, that's a cool link, gots to bookmark that one! I couldn't resist. It was late morning and they were just buzzing something fierce, so I pointed the lens at them, manually focused till I had the middle of the cloud, cranked the aperture down to f13 or so and shot four or five frames. Little surprised I got something!