Flaming Gorge Osprey – An Experiment That Worked

We returned home Thursday after spending three wonderful days camping at Flaming Gorge in NE Utah. This is very close to the view we had on most mornings from our campsites (two of them), though this image was taken the morning before the Osprey photo, below. As you’ll see, the lighting conditions were dramatically different…

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Early Spring Birds and Craziness on Antelope Island

 Typically our first spring camping trip is a shake-down cruise for the trailer to Antelope Island.  If anything goes wrong with the trailer (and it sometimes does after sitting all winter) I’ll be relatively close to home.  This year we spent the last two days of March on the island.  Most of the photos in this post were taken on that trip.   1/2500, f/6.3, ISO 500  There’s been a few Western Meadowlarks on the island for much of the winter but they’ve returned in large numbers now.  In all my travels in the west I don’t think I’ve ever seen any other area with such a high concentration of this species.   At times their beautiful song resonates all over the hills of the island.  Meadowlarks always bring back fond memories for me of growing up on the Montana farm.      1/2500, f/6.3, ISO 500 Loggerhead Shrikes are another very common species, especially on the northern part of the island.   They’ve been absent all winter but we’re seeing more of them on each visit now.   It was cloudy when this image was taken and I didn’t get a lot of light in the eye but I think there’s just enough.      1/2500, f/7.1, ISO 500 I always look forward to the return of the Long-billed Curlews with great anticipation and they started appearing about 10 days ago.  I was happy to get this shot of the male on the right displaying for the female.  Male and female curlews are almost identical but they can be differentiated by their…

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