This beautiful Snowy Egret was a bit of a loner. Linda and I were touring a known birding area in Galveston when we came across a large group of wading birds that included Snowy Egrets, Great Egrets, adolescent White Ibises, and a Roseate Spoonbill. But this guy was was not with the group. He was all by himself over to one side along the edge of a water ditch.

I happened to see him just when the late afternoon November sun peeked out from behind the clouds, backlighting the tufty feathers on his head. And he was posing perfectly. Indeed, with his pose he seemed to be telling me to take the photo while I had the opportunity, as he would pass this way but once. 
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With birds you don't pose them, you just grab for opportunities, taking pictures when you can, hoping you get a special shot. On this day I got lucky.

Fall colors came a bit late along the Mississippi River this year with the season's uncommonly warm temperatures. But when we arrived at Cuivre River State Park in Missouri, the colors began to come out of hiding and show themselves.This field of red was just steps away from our campsite at the park. Two days after I grabbed this image the field was turning brown.

There are two versions of the image. The top one is a conventionally-sized photo (16x9) while the bottom image is a panorama that has been stitched together from 7 separate photos. It captures the full width of the field. I invite you to click on both of them to see the difference. Which one do you like?

When Nat King Cole sang about an orange-colored sky, this might have been what he had in mind. This is a sunset on Fairfield Lake, a small lake south of Dallas. The lake was originally created in the late 1960s for the Big Brown power station as a cooling pool. Because the water stays warm in the winter months, it has weekly fishing tournaments from November through February. We sometimes stop here on our way home from a road trip.

This guy is intently studying something. I don't know what, but methinks it is a potential snack. Perched on a branch rather than wading gives an good look at the characteristic snowy egret yellow feet. The photo was taken in late April and the bird's breeding plumage has almost completely gone away. He was apparently pretty far away when I took this picture as the photo file tells me I caught him with my lens extended to its full 500mm. Even so, I cropped the image to give you a closer look. 

Few of you showed any love for the vultures photos post last week. So how about some eagles?

Here are a four eagles from the World Bird Sanctuary. Captain, the Bald Eagle is 5 years old and has a congenital eye disease making it almost blind. The Golden Eagle, Buchanan, was hatched in captivity in 1999 which prohibits it from living wild. The two Bateleur Eagles are native to Africa. Shadow has been at the sanctuary since 1987, making him at least 31 years old. And Tsavo was hatched in 2002 in Cameroon and captured as a chick.

Like the vultures, these birds were all in big wire cages that presented some problems for getting the photos – mainly shooting through the wire mesh of the cages so that it would seem theses are awesome photos of birds out in the wild. 

I don't think anyone will ever accuse the Turkey Vulture or the Andean Condor of being cute. in fact, these birds are really downright ugly, hence the title which is a phrase I remember my mother using – probably when talking about me,.

Both of these guys are large birds. The Turkey Vulture which is common across the U.S. has a wingspan of up to 6 feet. The Andean Condor, the largest flying bird the world, makes the Turkey Vulture seem small with its wingspan of 10 feet. Both birds are scavengers, cleaning up the habitat. That's why they have bald heads – they stay a lot cleaner than if they had feathers when they are feeding and sticking their heads in places that are less than salubrious.

These photos were taken at the World Bird Sanctuary in Valley Park, MO, about 25 miles  west of St. Louis. All the birds in the sanctuary have suffered some malady or injury that prohibits them from living in the wild.

Our visit gave me an opportunity to grab some really close-up shots of birds typically seen only from a distance. Unfortunately, since the birds are in cages, all the photos must be taken through the grid of wire fencing. While a bit of obstacle, this was not as problematic as the photo backgrounds caused by the cages.

This Great Egret still has most of her mating aigrettes (long plumes) while the green at the base of her bill has already faded away. You can see two chicks here but I think there were actually four chicks in the nest. In this photo mom is tending to the chicks after feeding is finished. Great Egrets will lay anywhere from one to six eggs, and the chicks will fledge and leave the nest in about 24 days.

While walking to a lake at the San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge we saw this guy in a little pond along the side of the trail. He was tucked in at the back of the pond under the shade of some bushes on the bank. He was content to just sit there and stare back at me, making absolutely no effort to move away. While it looks like we were pretty close to each other, the photo was taken from about 25 feet away with a rather long telephoto lens.

Brown pelicans are gregarious and often seen flying in groups – called squadrons – along the shoreline of Galveston Island. I was fortunate to happen to catch this squadron at just the right moment with the birds in an equally spaced formation and with every bird's wings in the same position.