Bird brains

Yearling black crowned night heron

Ken, Doug and I loaded up our nikon cameras and our longest lenses and had a photographic outing today. Not like we wouldn't shoot with a Canon photographer, its just that we would have to see his or her work first.

Black crowned night heron adult male?

First today, a trip to an alternate local hawk nest to see three young dark morph red tailed hawklets.

Afterwards we headed down to Lakeside to Lindo Lake to go birdwatching and shoot some photos. New place for us, lots of avian swag there.

Blue herons, white herons (the greater egret ardea alba), black night crowned herons, egrets, cranes, geese, ducks, grackles, blackbirds and all sorts of other cool stuff. The neatest was the tall tree where a trio of white heron fledges played far overhead. Spectacular.

Took a ton of pictures, this was pretty extraordinary to watch. People that like to observe birds aren't just there for a static image or moment, animal behavior is interesting and important to us, not to mention often beautiful.

Got a few blue heron pics too.

Saw some neat folks down there like this Filipino woman.

There was a skateboard park nearby and I took some shots of some really good skaters. More flying objects.

After a while, we headed back to Santee Lakes and grabbed some shots there. No ospreys again but some familiar bird faces.

Juvenile black crowned night heron