Hidden Crowns

The last tow days I have been attending a conference for work on the east side of town, which gives me the opportunity to run over to Hornsby Bend Bird Observatory during lunch. A pretty good deal if you don't mind eating with the flies or among the smell of a waste-water treatment facility. This area is bordered on the south by the Colorado river and goes through a section of woods and different levels and sizes of ponds before ending up in fields on the northern side. So on any given day you can see a large number and variety of bird species. Unfortunately, in the hour or so I had for lunch I could not cover each area, but still managed to see a quite a few cool birds. Perhaps the best bird I saw was one I could not get a picture of--the Common Snipe. I also saw Red-tailed Hawks to Meadowlarks, neither of which wanted their photo taken.

On the ponds I did see this Spotted Sandpiper and this male Northern Pintail.





As you can tell, by the time I got out of the car and took the photo of the pintail he was well into his retreat posture and I did not have time to pretend to be aloof in order to get a better shot.

On the road leading around the ponds there were as usual a bunch of American Pipits wagging their tails up and down. I particularly like this little guy's shadow.



Finally, as I drove down the dirt road between the southern most pond and the woods, I saw both a Ruby-crowned Kinglet and an Orange-crowned Warbler. Interestingly enough, both of these birds rarely exhibit the field marks for which they are named. The kinglets are fun because of their un-bird-like bravado in the face of strange men with cameras.