I love Bobwhite Quail. They are neat little birds that run along the ground which makes them difficult to photograph. These images were taken in or near the alley that borders my front yard. I am glad to see the numbers of these birds increasing in the area. And I may have more of these encounters if the stray cat numbers continue to stay low.

This bird is a male and is running from me because I tried to follow him and his friend to take their picture. I was careful to approach slowly and not to make any sudden moves. Somewhere in the process, I got too close and they began to move away from me.

Most of my pictures of Bobwhite are like these, quick snaps of a bird on the run. Makes them a challenge, and difficult to photograph without a blind and baiting them to a photogenic distance.

This image shows the male in front and the female following as they scooted out of camera range. She came with him into the yard but she was always far enough away that getting them both in the frame was not possible. Despite the technical frustrations, they are fun to watch and photograph when I can. These live in my neighborhood and it is always exciting to see them doing their thing.

For more information on these birds, you can pop over to the All About Birds website at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. It’s where you can learn useful things like the family name for these birds has changed from Phasianidae to Odontophoridae sometime in the last 40 years. This site helps me make sure I keep up with the refinements in taxonomy. It is worth a look.

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During our first December in West Texas, we experienced an ice and snow storm that left its aftermath on the ground through New Year’s.  During this time, I set up a bird feeder in the Elm tree in the front yard. As you can see, the snow is deep enough to keep Ms. Cardinal from finding something to eat beneath.

She spent some time in the snow, and then would perch in the dead Lantana vines while eyeing the nearby snow for any seeds she could spot that might have spilled from the bird feeder.

Several different kinds of birds came to my bird feeder. Here you see a female Northern Cardinal, Cardinalis cardinalis, and a male House Finch, Haemorhous mexicanus, sharing the bounty of the bird feeder. You can see their opposites at the bird feeder here.

Nothing went to waste because there were plenty of hungry birds who came by and picked up the seeds that others had spilled while feeding.

Ms. Cardinal was kind enough to pose for me despite the cold and busily searching for food. I got to see and photograph many different kinds of birds that spend the winter in West Texas. From the amount of the seeds consumed, my one little bird feeder helped keep many of them from starving while waiting for the snow to melt. I like song-birds and sometimes they need a little help from their friends.

It is now the fall of 2018, and I haven’t seen many cardinals this year. We had snow in early November for about a day. It has been wet enough this year and warm enough that my feathered friends are going elsewhere to eat. One thing you can count on in observing wildlife is that things change and sometimes you get to make pretty photographs and sometimes you don’t. Happy trails, all.

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When we first came to West Texas it snowed right before New Year’s. It was a big snowstorm and I felt sorry for the local birds since finding food underneath the snow was difficult at best. So, I put out a feeder loaded with seeds and during the few days that it was up, I got to meet several new species of birds I had never seen before. This fella is a Curve-billed Thrasher, Toxostomata curvirostre.

I had previously encountered brown thrashers in Fort Worth, and they were notoriously difficult to approach closely enough for a good picture. I was stunned by this bird’s willingness to let me crunch on icy ground within 20 feet of the Hackberry tree in the front yard. Of course, it was pretty cold and the bird feeder nearby was on his mind.

Here he is on the feeder, and you can see that it was designed for much smaller birds. He also seemed to prefer corn because he passed all the smaller seeds over for the kernels of corn he could reach.

The bird feeder was suspended on a single strand of monofilament fishing line and tended to pivot. This little fella persisted in hanging on and contorting himself while he fished for corn kernels. He had to flap a bit to keep from falling off. His size tended to keep the smaller birds off the feeder while he was there, but the two thrashers that visited that day ate their fill and moved off so the others could land on the filling station and tank up.

The next year, we had thrashers visit during November to feast on the pecan crop.

When he got tired of shaking pecans, this guy perched on top of the telephone pole at the corner of the yard. I took this picture because he seemed intently interested in something below. No idea what, though.

These guys have brownish gray feathers on the back and brown speckles on a sandy white breast. They are the only bird I have seen in Texas with those orange eyes. The eyes and the recurved bill are the standout features of these birds.

They range all over the dry parts of the Southwestern United States and on into Mexico. My part of Texas is on the eastern edge of their range. They are part of the Mimidae family which includes the Mockingbirds and all the other species of thrashers. When I first saw these, I was reminded of Mockingbirds. They are lively creatures with intense orange eyes, remarkable. It was fun to get the chance to watch them do their thing.

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As you can see this little fellow blends in with the dirt along the edge of a country road. He is an immature male. When I first saw him, I thought he might be a young quail by the way he trotted along the road. His throat and breast markings also made me think quail at the long distance I was forced to view him because of his nervousness. At this distance, the horns they exhibit suggest the top knot of a quail. The little guy wouldn’t let me get closer than 100 feet before moving away which made taking his picture a challenge.

In this image, you can see the two horns visible on the top of his head and the yellow throat markings. The yellow in the throat makes one think he might be a Meadow Lark, but Meadow Larks lack horns. You can also see that this bird is not built like a quail, nor does he fly like one.

The day I saw this fellow, a little farther down the road I photographed another species I had not see before. You can see pictures of that adventure here . All in all, it is a remarkable day when you get to see two species of birds you haven’t seen before.

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Pictured here are two species of migratory shorebirds that stopped in Fort Worth on their way north. The larger, brown birds are Long-billed Dowitchers and the smaller birds are Wilson’s Phalaropes.

In the second image, you can see that these two species can feed side by side in the same habitat yet not compete with each other for the same food. By virture of their longer beaks, the Dowitchers can feed deep in the mud whilst the Phalaropes eat from shallower parts of the mudflat.

I included this last image because I like the juxtaposition of the Dowitcher and its reflection. Moments like these are one of the reasons I enjoy photographing wildlife.

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My son Michael spotted this flock in our Sycamore trees but by the time I got my camera gear, they had moved to the pecan trees at our neighbor’s where these pictures were taken. The flock was unwilling to let me get closer than about 150 feet. In the first image, you can see that there were 60 or more individuals in this group. This shot shows only a portion of the entire flock in the neighborhood. The yellow head on these birds is unmistakably visible. The yellow head is worn by the males in this species. The females’ head looks more like a meadowlark’s plumage with patches of yellow, brown and black.

The second image is a little closer view of the bachelor’s hanging out in the pecan tree. Yellow-headed blackbirds are gregarious, and they work as a group to graze seed food sources during the fall and winter, and on their way north in the spring to marshes where they eat a variety of insects and spiders during the warm parts of the year.

During the breeding season, males will stake out territories and drive off competing males. During the cold seasons, the males will flock together and feed farther north than the female flocks which go south into Mexico.

Our part of Texas is on the flyway as these birds head north into the plains and on to breed in Canada. I was a lucky to be able to see and photograph these remarkably colored birds during their brief visit on their travels. You can read more about these birds at Cornell University’s Ornithology Laboratory website.

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I was headed home on a windy February day a couple of years ago when I happened to see a Loggerhead Shrike perched in a young sapling. Normally when I see one of these, it is perched out of reach for good pictures. This little fellow was being buffeted about by the wind while clinging tightly to his branch out in the middle of nowhere.

These little birds are distinctively marked, their head and back are grey, their breasts are creamy white, and there are white wing patches in a field of black underneath their wings. If you see one up close, the black eye bar and the recurved beak tip are characteristics that tell you you’re seeing a Shrike.

You can see this fellow’s feathers are getting rearranged by the wind. It was a cool day and sunset was coming soon. Notice the curved tip on the upper beak. This little guy is a flesh eating predator. Some folks call them butcher birds because of their habit of storing prey impaled on thorns or barbed wire. This guy just looks cold and put upon.

Loggerhead Shrikes, a.k.a. Lanius ludovicianus belong to the family Laniidae and are found throughout Texas pretty much year round. They range down into Mexico from northern Texas and prefer wide open country with few trees, particularly ones with thorns like mesquite, for spiking the lizards, snakes, mice, and small birds they like to eat. Not bad for a killer songbird, who is not much larger than a sparrow. Read more about this little guy and his relatives here and here.

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Northern Shoveler ducks belong to the species Anas clypeata in the family Anatidae. The distinguishing feature of this species is the large spoon-shaped bill. The male in breeding plumage has a blackish head trimmed with iridescent green which is visible when the light is right. His bill is black and his feet are orange. Females have orange feet and orange bills. The female, as you can see, is brown and white mottled to make her hard to find by predators. Did you notice the difference in eye color?

In this image, you can see the reddish brown bellies of the 3 males, their white under-wings, their gray-blue upper wing patch, and their iridescent green specula on the trailing edges of the wings. These colorful markings and their long bills make it easy to identify these birds in flight.

In this image, you can see 2 females and a male dabbling for their dinner. These ducks use their bills to filter food from the bottom mud of the wetlands where they live or visit. In this photo, these ducks were on open water adjacent to a marsh.

In the last image, you can see 2 males and a female shoveler busily sluicing water through their beaks they have filled with mud. They wash away the mud by opening and closing their beaks and the channels in the beak trap plant and small animals that they eat.

We get to see Shovelers in Texas during the winter when they migrate in from colder places to visit until spring. Beautiful ducks!

I rarely have seen this species in large groups,  at most 4 to 10 individuals would travel around the places I look for waterfowl. They are much larger than the mallards which folks mistake them for. They are interesting to watch if you can get close enough. I shot these images with a 300mm lens from some distance away and I have enlarged portions of these images I used to make the images you see here. Someday, I will be able to afford longer lenses but they are usually heavy and require a tripod. I try to keep my gear light and mobile so I can move readily to capture something interesting.

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Our front porch has a roof and a southern exposure near two mature pecan trees. Barn swallows like this location for nesting and will rebuild their nest in this same location year after year.

This is a photo of a recently hatched barn swallow, Hirundo rustica. They are pretty much naked except for bits of grey downy feathers. Since this is such a hot location in early June, I suspect having fewer feathers helps them stay cooler than they would otherwise.

Here you see this little guy squawking at me for scaring mom off the nest to take his picture. Their parents would sit in the nearby pecan trees and fuss at me while I was taking pictures of their little ones.

This photo shows three babies in the nest about 4 days after the previous photo. The nest is typical of the nests barn swallows make by scooping up mud and mixing it with bits of grass to build a conical platform up near the eave of the porch roof. I wonder if these birds are responsible for the invention of adobe construction materials? Maybe somebody in the past observed the swallow’s technique and decided to scale it up to people size structures. Hmmmm.

Here is one of the nestlings who is nearly through replacing his downy feathers with flight feathers. Notice how big the mouth is on this youngster. These birds make their living by flying around and catching insects in their big mouths. They eat flies, mosquitos, bees, wasps, butterflies, and beetles. They are beneficial to man because they help eat those bugs that we don’t like, or that compete with us for our food crops, or spread disease. Barn swallows get their name from their tendency to build nests in barns and other man-made structures. They belong to the same family (Hirundinidae) as the cliff and cave swallows, and the purple martins.

In this last picture, you can see that this little guy is just about ready to leave the nest. In fact, when I returned about 5 days later all I found was an empty nest. My luck with being able to photograph these guys and the robins the month before was poor. Such is the way of wildlife photography. Unless you spend every waking hour with the nest, you are liable to miss something important.

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In this image, you can see a black bird with white shoulder patches.
He is sitting in a mesquite tree growing along a barbed wire fenceline. At first glance, I thought I was seeing a red-winged blackbird that had grown the wrong color of feathers for some reason. It was only after I was able to look through my 300mm lens that I knew I was looking at some other kind of bird. Notice the robust beak on this fellow, red-wing blackbirds do not have such a large beak, and where this fellow has white feathers, red-wing blackbirds have red.

In this image, the shoulder patches are clearly visible as our subject settles into a lower branch of the mesquite tree.

In the last picture, you can see two birds and their shoulder patches clearly. Also, you get a good look at their large beaks. The two birds are male and they are pestering each other to see who is the big bird in cowtown.

I was amazed to see these birds because I was out looking primarily for wildflowers that day. It was a double lucky day for me because I spotted yet another species of bird I had never seen just a little ways down the road from these fellows. You can see them here if you’d like.

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