Birds and Nature

This female Long-tailed Duck was found by a local birder a few days ago. I got this pic yesterday but lost the media card for 24 hrs and just refound it. This species is pretty rare in my area with the last in 2012 that I found at Brush Hollow Res . The current Long-tailed Duck has less black on it's head than the one I found 2012. Interestingly that one was found only one day in January before this one. It is not easy to see and photograph this duck as this property is private. I photographed it from the public parking lot in front but quickly lost the duck as it swam on back where not visible from the public area. SeEtta

I spotted this adult Northern Goshawk this afternoon a few miles east of Canon City in a cactus grassland area as it flew across the road in front of me. While I couldn't see field marks as I was too distant it's flying very low to the ground got my attention. When it landed in a juniper shrub about 200 feet from me I stopped my car and saw it's white eyebrow in my binoculars so grabbed my camera and quickly got off a few shots in the short time before it flew off. As I only had about 30 seconds to get pics and there was no good place to pull off the road I had to take the pics with my car running (pulled to the side of the driving lane, fortunately no traffic came by) so that added to less than great shots. But these pics clearly show the salient field marks for adult Northern Goshawk: that big white supercilium (eyebrow stripe, dark stripe through eye, dark cap, long tail, bluish grey upperparts and some broad dark but inconspicuous bands on it's grey tail ...