More International Birds

The second time I went to Sylvan Heights Bird Park, I ended up with over 1000 pictures. So I'm still going through them and enjoying them.  Here's a few more to share with you.

I took lots of pictures of the red-crested pochards.  They were very active and I loved their hairdos.

Red-crested pochard

These white-faced whistling ducks were probably pair bonding. But they were nibbling on each other.  Here they looked like they might be telling secrets too.

White-faced whistling ducks

I took this picture for the beautiful feather patterns

Normal wood-duck and a mutation known as a silver

Hooded Merganser - thanks Stewart 

Both times I was at the park, I took a lot of pictures of the Nenes. This is Hawaii's national bird and is almost extinct.  This one was really aggressive and would run at the fence, making it very hard to get a picture of him.  The other nenes would hang out in the shade against a fence and refused to pose.

The aggressive Nene goose from Hawaii in the snow

Head study of the Nene

White-faced whistling duck and Coscoroba swan 

Ringed teal

Cinnamon teal 

A mix of swimmers in the international pond

Canvasback 

Indian Spot-billed Duck

The female Indian spot-billed duck

I was excited to see the falcated duck.  We had this as a wild duck at Colusa NWR in the Sacramento Valley of California and I spent a lot of time doing crow control and interpretation.   I think around 10,000 people came to see it and I heard it mated with an American widgeon and came back with his family the following winter.  It was probably an escapee.

Falcated Duck

 I'm still trying to figure out a lot of the species I photographed. Please leave me a comment if I'm wrong.

Meanwhile, our birds seem to be already starting to leave. We've had a couple of days with few swans and today we saw no American white pelicans or snow geese. I went to look for a common gallinule after work but didn't find it.

Sorry about missing my Sunday post. My computer was down for several days.

Click on the picture below for more great bird blogs from around the world. And you are invited to share your bird blogs on Wild Bird Wednesday.

Flamingos From All Over

I got interested in figuring out flamingo species after spending a couple of days watching two groups of them at Sylvan Heights Bird Park.  There is one group of flamingos with three species in it. Most of the pictures come from that group.  The American flamingos live in the Landing Zone, where you can get within touching distance of them, although separated from them by a fence. It is very hard to get pictures of them without a fence in the background or foreground so I kept just one picture of them.

(Note: click on a picture to see all larger.)

Most of these birds are Chilean flamingos - Bills gray with black tip and pink knees on gray legs and feet. Not sure what the bill bump meant

Think this is a juvenile chilean

More Chileans

Lesser flamingo in front

A Chilean

After I'd taken many pictures of single to multiple flamingos, I started seeing them as art.  I also loved that I could see different expressions in their faces.  I fought to isolate some compositions of them and then tried to fit them into frames as they contorted themselves.  I ended up with lots of pictures of parts of them.

Spotlighted flamingos

American flamingo in a moody moment

Loved those stern expressions - all they are missing is the pitchfork

Same expression with pitchfork

Trying to stuff as much of a flamingo as I can into this picture - may be a juvenile greater flamingo

What great tonality

The only way I could showcase their feet was to take just the feet on those rebar legs

That second guy was not following my stage directions

I think this is a young greater flamingo - love those rebar legs (can't find leg color in juveniles)

A lesser flamingo - see all the black in the bill? And it is more reddish 

Think this youngster is a juvenile Chilean

Flamingos are fascinating to me on many levels.  They are so strange and beautiful.  And was blown away when finding out that their knees are actually their ankles.  Their knees are hidden under their feathers.

And they feed more like  baleen whales and oysters then regular birds. They have horny plates in their beaks which let them strain food from the mud and water. And their bills are upside down and only the top bill is not attached to the skull so only it will move. So, they have to feed with their bills upside down so the top bill can do the dropping and moving.

This guys are filter feeders

Feeding  - they use their bills upside down

 American flamingos used to live in the Everglades,but they were extirpated 100 years ago.  Any flamingos seen in the wild today are believed to be escapees. But now they are reappearing in Central Florida, north of where they once were numerous. Check out that story here, then put it on your bucket list to  add them to your life American birds.

I'm joining Wild Bird Wednesday. For more blogs about birds, click the picture.

Duck, Duck, Goose

One of the visitors to the Pea Island Visitor Center told me about a wonderful place where you can go to enjoy water birds from around the world. That place is Sylvan Heights Bird Park, an important place for waterbird conservation as well as a wonderful place to see waterbirds and other endangered species from around the world.

A beautiful Northern Pintail from America - this species is almost always too far to photograph at Pea Island

A smew. a kind of merganzer,  from Eurasia

The endangered white winged duck from southeast Asia

African Pygmy Goose male

African Pygmy Goose females

Radjah shelduck - from Australia

The mandarin duck - which looks like an egomaniac 

Red-crested pochard were laid back and drifted around dozing and peeking - from England

I got a kick out out of this Barrow's goldeneye doing his morning ablutions. I have never seen a bird roll completely over on its back in the water.

Gotta get spiffed up here

Working on the chest

Working from another angle

All spiffed up

Hawaiian Nene,  a goose and the endangered state bird of Hawaii

Common Shelduck - a Eurasian species that may nest in rabbit burrows

Eurasian Wigeon

Courting starts early for this species

For more bird blogs from around the world, Click here.  And Stewart invites writers of all bird blogs to add their links to Wild Bird Wednesday.