This is my contribution to Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Male vs Female prompt.
Male and female American Avocets feeding on a slough near Punnichy, Saskatchewan, Canada. The foreground bird with the straighter bill is the male.
A male Eurasian Blue Tit feeding the female during incubation. Photographed using a specially constructed nestbox in a garden in Hatherton near Nantwich in southern Cheshire, England.
Female and male Wilson’s Phalarope on Middle Quill Lake, Saskatchewan, Canada. The more colourful bird in the foreground is the female. In the Phalarope family of birds the males incubate the eggs and as a result have more subdued plumage for camouflage.
Male and female Common Terns mating on the Lake Huron shoreline in Southampton, Ontario, Canada.
My Saturday Bird this week is a female Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) and is a follow up to my Saturday Bird two weeks ago which was a male Red-winged Blackbird.
I waited two weeks to post the female because the males normally arrive some time before the females. This allows the males to set up territories before the females arrive.
This female was photographed in central Saskatchewan in the spring.
This is my contribution to Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Birds prompt.
With nearly 40 years of bird photography in my archives I decided to go with one photo from each decade.
1980s. An adult Eurasian Blue Tit feeding young in a specially constructed nestbox in a garden in Hatherton near Nantwich in southern Cheshire, England.
1990s. Male and female American Avocets in summer (breeding) plumage on a slough near Punnichy, Saskatchewan, Canada.
2000s. An Osprey with a White Sucker on the Lake Huron shoreline in Southampton, Ontario, Canada.
2010s. An immature Ruby-throated Hummingbird on the South Bruce Peninsula, Ontario, Canada.
This week Tina gives us the prompt Special Moments for the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge.
A female Wilson’s Phalarope. I was on a section of the Middle Quill Lake shoreline looking for summer migrants when half a dozen Wilson’s Phalaropes flew in and started feeding around me. I lay down in the sand (and wildfowl poop) to photograph them at eye level. They completely ignored me, some of the birds came so close I couldn’t focus on them.
Having been experimenting with intentional camera movement recently this photo may be where it started for me. A competitor in the 1982 Le Mans 24 hour motorcycle endurance race enters the start/finish straight shortly before midnight. Far to abstract for the magazine editor but I liked the images and have been experimenting on and off ever since.
An adult Eurasian Blue Tit feeding young in a specially constructed nestbox in a garden in Hatherton near Nantwich, Cheshire. I documented the entire nesting cycle from the beginning of nest building to the empty nestbox after the last youngster had left. Extensively published I spent a week looking at a nestbox photo on the contents page of the Radio Times without recognising it as mine.
Storm clouds and light beams over Loch Arkaig, Scotland. I was in Scotland one autumn with the plan of doing lots of landscape photography. With almost constant rain I wasn’t getting a lot of photos until the end of day three when the rain stopped towards sunset. One of the photos from this evening was published worldwide by Olympus Japan and won a national photo contest on the theme of ‘The Beauty of Light.’
