Yosemite and More

Visited the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge and the Merced Wildlife Refuge on VERY different days. One very sunny, the other fog bound. The Sacramento NWR, was a clear day with a lot of visitors that limited the  birds near the auto route. The fog and few visitors actually allowed for more opportunities at the Merced NWR. Case in point First the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge Blue Morph Ross Geese White Faced Ibis, Hunting and Hiding Small Bufflehead Duck, these swim fast and don't like  cars, people, or cameras. This is taken through the reeds and heavily cropped. I thought this hawk was going to take off but instead it just fluffed it's feathers and settled back down. Merced National Wildlife Refuge seemed to have a wider and more easily photographable subjects. Thought this was an interesting juxtaposition. Each section of the refuge is flooded to to certain depth depending on what species they want to accommodate. I find it interesting that in the wild the male al...

 Seems like so far this year it's the year of birds for me. Not really but I have been lucky several times. I've decided to post the bird photos from several outings in this one post. I've visited the Tule Lake Wildlife Refuge, Shasta Dam and Shasta Valley National Wildlife Refuge. I'll let the Merced Wildlife Refuge birds remain in my prior post. The Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge is in far Northern California and I visited it about two weeks too late for optimum birding. Not complaining. This is one of the smaller ducks, don't think I've ever seen one before. The contrast between the dirty water of the canal and the black and white of the Buffalo Head is quite stark. Most of the Bald Eagle shots I've made are from a great distance. This one was very accommodating.  It stayed perched while I slowly approached getting as close as I  could across a canal. I believe this to be a Juvenile Red Tail Hawk by the size of it's beak and of course feathers.  I...