Friday, May 14, 2010

The Emerald Grove Street Nest-- I'm Getting A Hard Hat With Eyes, Plus Yellow-crowned Night Herons


Begging
Blogger has taken a dive. It's been awhile so I guess I can't complain too much. Currently the cursor keeps running off the page and then runs across the desktop and runs across whatever. Kind of a Harry Potter thing. And it won't load the rest of the photos that come before these. Therefore Blogger must have a rest. Go ahead and check out what's here and see what you come up with.




More begging.




I'd been trying to shoot through that gap between trees in 30 mph gusts of wind that kept blowing the trees, the nest, and lots of leaves into the way of the camera while Mama Emerald was deciding whether or not she was going to take my head off. It was quite the adventurous day. By the way the photo above is under magnification, I was about 4 times further away than it looks.
Mama Emerald of the Emerald Grove St. Red-tails is in a very bad mood. There has been cold drenching rain for the last four days. I only took photos for 37 minutes and she had had it from the moment I got there. Today I only saw one eyass. that doesn't necessarily mean something has happened it just means that's all I saw..
Emerald flew into my sightline from the east and landed on a power pole. See her?

By the way Emerald is an extremely large and powerful Red-tail.
















She planes her wings flawlessly in the high winds and did much kiting while watching me today.


Emerald even menaced me after I'd gotten into the car and driven a quarter mile...


Photo by Francois Portmann
Yellow-crowned Night Heron
This looks like something a Night Heron would ordinarily be doing, preening, right?
Photo by Francois Portman
But then Francois took this shot. Two Yellow-crowned Night Herons taking a walk and suddenly the one in the rear seems to have been possessed by demons and is about to make the head of the guy in front spin around backwards, or Mr. Behind Crazy Bird has been holding a secret grudge because he always has to walk in back and Mr Ahead Oblivious Bird is about to get bushwhacked.
I absolutely love this photograph but I've no idea what is actually going on in a real world that doesn't necessarily contain demon possessed Night Herons or vindictive grudge holding Night Herons either so I'm going to ask Francois if he knows what is going on.
For more terrific Yellow-crowned Night Heron stuff go to Francois' blog-
Donegal Browne
More tomorrow when Blogger is rested.

2 comments:

cvinzant said...

wow, i love that crazy heron. it looks so exotic

Donegal Browne said...

Doesn't it though!