More spotting

today I, yet again, went bird spotting. I almost didn't go, but I just felt drawn to it today. The weather wasn't the best for it in that it was partly cloudy and supposed to get more cloudy. I know that if you live in Michigan, where they expect 5" of snow today, this doesn't sound all that bad, but from a photography standpoint, and beingthat I use a 100-400mm lens, bright sunny days are better. I started out this morniing at Sunset Park. It was about 7:00 AM. Much later than this and I feel like I slept the day away. Throughout my bird spotting I took about 300 photographs. Of that, I kept about kept about 82, and uploaded about 38 to Flickr. A normal day for me!

My first sight this morning was...none other than a Gabrels Quail:

Nothing unusual there. They are likewinged rats out here...and they are generally NOT afraid of people.
Infact they rushed my car:

They were everywhere:

Rats are not this brave!!!

I've gotten fairly good at spotting birds. Not always good at taking photos mind you, but I can often spot a bird before someone else would, and can generally determine the family it belongs to.
Back in Michigan I could often determine the bird in the bush by the sounds it was making. I'm not to that point yet here in Vegas, but I'm working on it.

Two birds, well three really give me identification problems.
1. Raptors.
2. Sparrows.
3. Hummingbirds.

There are sooo many variations though, that I don't feel too bad about not being able to always identify the exact type.

There is nothing I enjoy more, well thats legal anyways, than going out and photographing a bird I've never seen before, or taking a better photograph of a bird than I have before. Today, I've done both!!
Here is an unknown raptor:

not seeing him fly makes it even more difficult to identify exactly.
Red Tailed?? red Shouldered???Sharp Shinned? Broad Winged? I don't know.....



But I think I got some good pics!!!


This bird is a rare one too:

Although he does fly on a set schedule...lol

Sunset Park itself has much to offer. Fishing, remote Control Boating, Birding, Dog Park, Exercise, relaxation.

One of the complaints I've often read about Vegas, and never understood, is that there are no parks in Vegas. There There are 3 parks within 5 miles of my house. There are 10-15 specific DOG parks in Clark County. Red rock, Valley of Fire, Henderson Bird Preserve, Sunset Park, Gillespie Park, Horsemans Park, Clark County Wetlands Preserve, and on and on. No parks??? Please, your just lazy, or toooo f...ing picky!!!!!Not my fault they didn't build a park on your front step!!!!!!

This couple had the misfortune/advantage of feeding the ducks. She now has a "following"...lol




When I woke up this morning, about 5:40 AM, it looked dreary out. Yahoo forcast mostly cloudy today and cloudy on Sunday. When you are using a 100-400mm lens, clouds can make all the difference between a great, pin sharp photo, and an ok, kinda sharp photo. Yes I know its a Canon 100-400mm IS "L" class lens, but it still matters!

Regardless, I felt a, desire is not the right word, but its kind of accurate, to go anyway.
When I arrived at the Preserve, it was sunny!!





After leaving Sunset Park I went to the Clark County Wetlands Preserve. This is where, if you remember from a previous post, the Las Vegas Wash is. It flooded last week.

Next post...the Wetlands Preserve....

Funny

Hoover Dam

Last week Jack Jones and his wife Gail, were in town. I hope I remembered her name right! I'm terrible with names and should have wrote it down!!! Anyways, Jack was telling me that on Monday they were going to rent a car and go to the Hoover Dam. I thought that since I was off Monday, I could take them. Renting a car in Vegas is pretty expensive. We picked them up at the Stratosphere where they were staying at and drove out to the Hoover Dam. The weather here has been miserable for the last week and that day was no exception. Cold, windy, and rainy.


Here you can see the construction of the new bridge that will bypass the Hoover Dam is making good progress. This "by pass" was started shortly after 9-11 to keep large vehicles off the Dam.


Here is me and Jack at the Dam.


Jack and Gail taking pictures at the dam.


Here is Karen and Gail at the dam.


Jack taking more pictures at one of the turn outs.

The traffic going to the dam from Nevada was un believable. The back up was several miles long. I've never seen it that bad before.

Before we picked them up, they went to IHop to get some food. The line was all of the way out the door, so they had to settle for cold bagels for breakfast. Since we had plenty of time left, we stopped by the Copper Keg for some food. Everyone who we have taken there loves it, and they did too. After we dropped them off at the airport, Jack called me and said their flight had been delayed an hour!

We had a great time though. It was nice to see Jack again, and to meet his wife. It sad to hear about the plant I worked at and what is happenining to the people there. It definitely confirms for me though, that I made the right choice in leaving when I did.

Like father...like son

This is my nephew Austin at a recent wrestling match:

and also here:

No doubt he either just kicked someone's but, or was about to!

Much like Austin, his father (my brother) was heavy into sports during high school. I have a few pictures from back in the day when he was a youngster(far left):

















And below is an action shot:


















Brian, remember drinking shots of water at Christmas while I was drinking real shots and passed out by the time Karen got home? Revenge.....lol

Nice shorts BTW......lol

Ya never know

what you'll see in Las Vegas:



On patrol in the "bad" side of Las Vegas. The part of town you'll NEVER hear or read about!

Checking out

my Google Analytics page today this blog has been visited by people in 76 different countries now. As expected, most visits come from the USA, Michigan specifically followed by California and Nevada.
Some other stats:
3,500 visits
2,500 unique visits....if you visited twice, it knows it was you and only counts you once.
5,600 pages viewed
73% of visitors have never been to my blog before.
60% use I.E. Exlporer
33% use Firefox although I have also been visited by people surfing on the Wii, Playstation 3, and an IPhone.
46% have cable, and 26% have DSL
90% use Windows
I've been visited by 52 states in the USA......they count Washington DC as a state and there were some visits from the USA where they couldn't figure out where they came from....so that makes 52.

Google Analytics is a great program....lol

Well I made it

kind of sort of to the Desert National Wildlife Preserve. We started out headed to Lake Mead. I had heard there have been a great many sightings of Bald Eagles there recently. En route to the freeway I decided to try and find the Desert National Wildlife Preserve I had been reading about on the web. I should have printed directions......

We ended up driving about 1.5 hours or so. We did get to see the preserve but there was no way to enter it. The up side is that we got to go to the Pahranagat National Wildlife Preserve. It is located in the Pahranagat Valley which was a main stop over point along the Mormon Trail. Here is a map of the preserve:




Here is a picture from the preserve.

We did see some wildlife there. There were thousands of American Coots there and god only knows what other waterfowl. Below is the best bird shot I got. A raptor of some sort. I was un able to determine the exact kind, so if you recognize it, leave me a comment and fill me in.
It is a Red Tailed Hawk.


We also saw this little guy hanging out.

Again I was unable to figure out what it was. Bums me out!...A Horned Lark

On the plus side, we did decide to go to the E.T. Highway.



This road leads to Area 51. I've read that the fine for getting close to Area 51 is $600, and if you actually cross into it you can be shot on sight by the military....no questions asked. This is one of the places the military uses to build/test prototype aircraft. It is also the place where aliens are rumored to be stored by the U.S. government.

This is part of the E.T. Highway.


Note that they do not call it the E.T. Highway for nothing...as seen below:



We also saw some cows and horses:





Overall a good trip. I would rather go there a bit later in the year when the sun is up longer so we can see more.