Good Morning Pigeon
Morning Pigeon, trucking along in the shadows at the Palace of the Governors on Santa Fe Plaza, brought to mind piano keys and I could almost hear it playing music playing.
Fine Art Images from the American Southwest
505-501-4880
Morning Pigeon, trucking along in the shadows at the Palace of the Governors on Santa Fe Plaza, brought to mind piano keys and I could almost hear it playing music playing.
Northern Pintail Ducks in the Bosque del Apache NWR, Socorro, New Mexico. I love the crisp, bright clear light and how it feels when morning breaks on a winter day in the National Wildlife Refuge in Socorro, NM
Merlin. “It’s mine, I killed it and now I’m going to eat it!” I made this image yesterday on my way home from my gallery in Arroyo Seco. I spotted the raptor on the fence post as I drove along. I pulled over, reversed about 100 feet and wound down my window. I said to myself, ‘that’s a male Merlin falcon, perhaps a juvenile’. I stopped about 20 feet away and while I was changing lenses I observed the Merlin tear at a dead bird’s chest … at least I’m pretty sure it was dead. I made about a dozen images, each, very much like this one. A few minutes later when a pickup came whipping by me, scaring the Merlin, the raptor took off clenching it’s prey. This evening I wrote to my friend Jean-Luc Catron, author of Raptors of New Mexico to confirm my ID of the bird. This is his reply … “What a beautiful photo!! You are right, it is a merlin, and because of the muted facial markings I can also say that it belongs to the subspecies richardsonii (prairie or Richardson’s merlin). It is a male because of the blue gray dorsal plumage”. Thank you Jean-Luc. Thank you for looking. G
Adobe Route, Free Climbing Pigeons. “I got this… I got this!” at the St. Francis Church Ranchos de Taos, NM. I’m guessing here… perhaps they were eating seeds they discovered in the mud or bits of gravel for their crop. One thing I’m certain about, as I watched them work their way up the building, flying would have been the easier route to take. Thanks for looking. G
Great Blue Heron stalking prey through the red willow in the marshes at the Bosque del Apache, NM. Here’s an image of the Heron and it’s prey. In this image from November 2007 he catches a fish at sunrise.
Cold snowy day here in San Cristobal. This House Finch joined four or five dozen Dark-eyed Juncos at the bird feeder. I think, at some point, it got overwhelmed by the frenzy over the bird seed I’d put out earlier. It retreated to the Ash tree close by, where this nice ‘bokeh’ (blurred background), isolated the bird and the branches. I made one image before it flew back to give the bird feeder another try … here it is.
Sandhill Cranes in flight at the Monte Vista NWR, Colorado. It’s always fun to make the two hour drive from Taos to Monte Vista. The National Wildlife Refuge is just south of the town of Monte Vista in the eastern San Luis Valley. There is plenty to see on the drive there and thousands of Sandhill Cranes are the payoff in the NWR at the end of the journey. That said … if we are lucky… the sunset on the Sangre de Cristo mountains on the drive home really makes for a spectacular finish to a day of photography. The Sandhill Cranes will be flying through there again in early March. That’s when we’ll make another trip north to spend time with them. Thanks for looking.