My Saturday Bird this week is the Marbled Godwit (Limosa fedoa), a large shorebird (wader to the British) and the largest of the four species of Godwit.
The vast majority breed in the mid-continental North America, followed by eastern Canada and the Alaska Peninsula, USA. Most of them winter on the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts of the U.S. and Mexico.
This individual was photographed in a marsh between Little Quill Lake and Middle Quill Lake in Saskatchewan, Canada in early summer.
My Saturday Bird this week is the Red-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta canadensis). The species breeds in coniferous forests across Canada, Alaska and the northeastern and western United States. It regularly migrates irruptively, with both the number migrating and the wintering locations varying from year to year.
This individual was photographed on the South Bruce Peninsula, Ontario, Canada in the winter.
This week my Saturday Bird is the Common Wood Pigeon (Columba palumbus) or Wood Pigeon it was known as when I was growing up. Some references hyphenate Wood-pigeon and I’ve also seen it referenced as Woodpigeon. It’s primarily a European species although its range does extend into western Asia.
The bird is drinking at a small garden pond at Faddiley near Nantwich in southern Cheshire, England. This angle shows the iridescent feathers around the neck and shoulders.
This week’s Saturday Bird is a male Mountain Bluebird (Sialia currucoides) with food for its young.
Photographed near Punnichy in Saskatchewan in the mid 1990s. The male and female were landing on this branch before going to the nest which was in the hollow steel leg of a grain bin.
My Saturday Bird this week is a breeding plumage Ring-billed Gull (Larus delawarensis) patrolling the Lake Huron shoreline in Southampton, Ontario. It’s flying up and down the shoreline looking for anything edible being washed up on the sand.
Outside the breeding season adult birds have variable amounts of grey in the feathers on the head and neck. Although it’s a North American species some birds regularly wander to Western Europe with a few spending the winters in Britain and Ireland.
Welcome to my new weekly feature, Saturday Bird this week featuring a photo of a European Robin from 1988.
Given the recent announcement that Olympus is selling their camera division to a Japanese investment company the future of the brand is now uncertain. So I thought this photo of a European Robin checking the camera settings on an Olympus would be appropriate.
The bird is standing on my OM Zuiko 300mm lens. I had already taken a hacksaw to the tripod mount to make clearance for a sound proofing blimp. The chrome OM2n body is taped up to cut down on reflections. The camera is loaded with the ubiquitous Kodachrome 64.
Welcome to the first in what will probably be a regular feature, Saturday Bird.
This is a male Yellow-headed Blackbird (Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus) photographed in central Saskatchewan, Canada in the summer. Their breeding habitat is Cattail marshes where they nest in colonies, often sharing the habitat with Red-winged Blackbirds.
It is one of the New World blackbirds and is not related to the Eurasian Blackbird.
