Eight Species and Eighteen Birds.

[ShawnZ]

All these images were made during spring, most from this year.

Notes of interst: The loons started out at least 150 yards from me but came to within twenty feet using a hand waving technique that the BorealBirder, aka Mike Hendrickson shared with the world wide web last year when he lured in red throated loons using the same approach. Thanks Mike! The greater scaup and northern harrier images were made recently during one very foggy and amazing morning in Duluth, that also saw me encounter two flocks of blue jays that both held well over 100 jays, with one flock surely being close to 200. I might have posted the bonapartes image on this site before, if so I apologize.

All images made with SonyA300, Sigma50/500, or Tokina80/400, iso200-400, f8 to f10, various shutter speeds, intermittent use of fill flash, cropped, global adjustments, minor cloning in the heron images, USM. Comments and critiques always welcome.

Regards,

Shawn Zierman.

[ShawnZ]

I could not remember the max number of images to post in an initial posting

Here are the rest.

[finnbay]

Very nice series, Shawn! Not a clinker in the bunch, though the herons tend to stand out as my faves!

[RainyEye]

That's for sure, those Heron's are great!

[Steve Foss]

Great stuff, Shawn!

[Dbl]

Great group of images! I can't pick a favorite!

[1luckydad]

Wow! Those Heron's are awesome.

[MN Shutterbug]

I gotta go with the herons,especially the last one. "My" rookery was enveloped in leaves before there was much activity. You really managed to nail a great vantage point.

I have never seen a flock of Blue Jays. That would be neat to see.

Nice series.

[mmeyer]

Very nice, Shawn! My favorite is the first heron image, although, it's very difficult to choose a favorite from a group like this.

[JayinMN]

Hard to pick a favorite out of this collection. They are all great!

[ShawnZ]

Thanks alot for the kind comments folks.

Here are four final images taken during the same time period(s).

Regards,

Shawn Zierman.

Turkey vulture showing some spittle attached from bill to bill....look close

There is no sky in this image, fg/bg are Lake Superior. A very foggy Lake Superior. If there had not been fog, bg would have been the town of Superior

Jays do not fly in tight flocks like some birds, waxwings for instance. They do land together at times in the same tree, but in the air they are spaced quite a bit. This was the best I could manage of the jays in the fog. This is but a small fraction of the whole flock. The jays were really struggling to negotiate the fog and could basically only fly to the next visible tree.

[mcary]

Shawn,

It looks like you had a great day! Very nice work.

[JohnK]

Great shots of the male Northern Harrier!

The males are very rare, at least out here, enough that many call them the Gray Ghost. I saw my first one last week on a trip to Idaho, but didn't get any even 1/2 way decent shots of it.

[Kate K]

Wow, great series. What a great find with those Herons all together like that.

[wishing for walleyes]

All very nice pictures.

[Birdsong]

Beautiful, Shawn. The herons would have been a thrill to see, much less photograph. The first two are dancing!