This morning

I actually got to go out and take some photographs. Yesterday when I went to work when I was getting out of the Spring Mountains the was the nicest sun rise I think I'd ever seen. I was hoping to catch one like it this morning. I woke at 4:30AM and left the house by 5:30AM hoping the cards would all fall in place and let me see one like yesterday....sadly it was not to be. I did enjoy getting out to take some photos though.


While this sun rise was nice, yesterday it was spectacular. Yesterday it was just hazy enough that you could look at the sun without squinting yet and it was a dark reddish/orange color! Today, it was just a sun rise.



A big ole raven....


An American Kestrel aka Sparrow hawk...






Not sure what this little guy is. he was the only one that didn't fly away.


A flock of Finches




And when I arrived home I found that Paulie had found an escape path from the house. He was sitting on the wall staring at me!

I joined

the meetup.com website the other day. This site allows you to join different groups that interest you. I joined the Southern Nevada Photographers group. The general purpose is to allow members to set up events. Ihad posted that I was going to the Clark County Wetlands Preserve on Thursday. One of the members replied that he would like to go also, so we met there and did some more...you guessed it, BIRD SPOTTING!

My

day was spent mostly bird spotting. I started out at the Clark County Wetlands Preserve and then went to Ash Meadows National Wildlife Preserve.
Inbetween the two I got to watch a felony traffic stop up close and ppersonal, by Las Vegas's finest, and had the pleasure of being bitten by a Boxer(dog) at Ash Meadows. All in one day! My day is complete!!


This is a Flycatcher of some sort.


A Redd Tailled Hawk with a helicopter in the back ground.


Not sure what it is, but I really like this picture.


This is a Common Merganser. He's having a bad hair day!!


Its a duck! Thats all I could figure out.




I think this is the biggest Great Egret I have ever seen. He was huge!!!


A Sparrow of some sort.


After leaving the Preserve, Karen and I decided to go to the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Preserve. I knew we would end up there at a bad time for birding, but I wanted to get a feel for the place. It is only about 7 miles or so from Death Valley and about an hour and a half from Las Vegas.

While driving down Silverado, near the Southpoint, we heard faint sirens. From out of nowhere to LVMPD cars were behind us. Ofcourse we pulled to the side and they passed us rushed towards the freeway. Then another one pulled out of the corner gas station with his lights on. He then turned his lights off and headed north on Las Vegas Blvd. Then he turned around and follwed the other two cars to the top of the overpass. This is what we saw on the top. I wished I had my 24-105mm lens on the camera at the time, but I was in birding mode and had to make due with my 100-400mm lens. A great lens, but not in this situation.



This is an interesting picture. If you click on it and go to my flickr site you can see I added a note to it. In front of all of the police cars is a guy who jumped out of his car and grabed his camera to start photographing the action.








The photographer who just stopped in the road to photograph the felony traffic stop.

To be continued......

Its called "The hollar"

or something like that. We don't know the exact name, but tommorow in the AM they will be driving all of the NASCAR semis from the South Point down Las Vegas Blvd to the Las Vegas Speedway. I'm thinkning about going out to get some photos of them. I'm not sure though, because NASCAR doesn't do much for me, but it might be cool.

Otherwise on Saturday I am going to Ash Medows for some bird spotting!

Ok...so I'm still learning

to identify Falconiformes.

This is a Male Northern Harrier.

This is a Female Northern Harrier

This is a Coppers Hawk

The wetlands

When I first went to the Wetlands Preserve back in 2007 I remember walking along the path and seeing a bird jump up. I only saw it for about 2-3 seconds, and it was gone. I knew it was a raptor type bird(or so I thought), and that it was whiteish. With a 2-3 second view of the bird it really could have been anything from an Osprey to a Black Capped Night Heron. White, Black and Grey, all blurred together in 2-3 seconds....Could describe either. Now I know for sure it WAS an Osprey as seen below:
(Time to eat some crow...I'm now sure that this is NOT an Osprey)


But i'm getting ahead of myself.....
The first bird I was was a Orange Capped Warbler:

I've seen these before in Michigan, but until today I thought they were Wilsons Warblers. They are not. Not enough black in them.

This is an unknown Sparrow:

I admit it, I'm too lazy to try to figure it out....lol



Other than to say this is a Sparrow, I'm not going to even try:


This is a seed of some kind. They were all over the park. You will see many of them in my other pictures. I don't know what they are.


Again, whaty I believe to be an Orange Crowned Warbler.


This, a new bird to me, is a Virden:






I walked about .5-3 miles by this point. I stopped for a smoke break. Everyone know excercising and smoking go together right????? While standing there I looked up and saw this:


This is an Osprey:

A new one on me. Never photographed one before.

This is another un known Raptor. I do not think it is a Red Tailled Hawk as it is missing the red/brown areas on the leading egdes of th wings:





This is a Snowy Egret. Not to be confused with a Cattle egret, much more orange on the beak, or a Great Egret, a bird 2-3 times larger.




A Common Morehead.

This is a Great Egret:



Note the black beak and, although hard to tell in the photo, it is 2-3 time larger tha the Snowey Egret.


some of the f;;ood damage from last week:





Although in this picture it seems, to me anyways, to have the face of an owl, it is, I think a Raptor.

I thought at first, it couldn't be a bird, it must be debris from the flooding. I was wrong:












the King Bird...








Un Known Sparow:


Green Winged teal: