The Odd Bird/Published Work/NPS Exhibition

The Last Week of Aug 2017

Life works in mysterious ways. Recently birding and bird photography had to take a back seat. Fortunately there's now light on the horizon and I have been able to venture out more and more. I even took a trip up to Rock Creek for a music festival where I managed a couple of hours of birding at the Kettle River Recreation Site. As I only had a very short time I walked around shooting handheld with the Nikon D500 and 200mm-500mm Nikon zoom.

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Some Rock Creek Images

Calioppe Hummingbird

A large forest fire a few years back has created the perfect habitat for woodpeckers.

Pileated Woodpecker

The image of the Three-toed Woodpecker below was taken from a considerable distance, really just a speck at the top of a tree and until I brought it into Lightroom I thought I had a Black-backed which would have been a lifer. 

Three-toed woodpecker

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This week I've been down to Boundary Bay in hope of seeing the Bar-tailed and Hudsonian Godwits. I haven't caught up with either yet but I did come across four Semi-Palmated Plovers, nothing too unusual except that one of the birds was very pale.

The first pix is one of the three regular Semi-palmated Plovers, the last a very pale or perhaps leucistic specimen.

When I first saw the light coloured plover bird I had to investigate. This was a day tor two before the sighting of the now famous Piping Plover discovery.

Semi-palmated Plover.

A pale or Leusistic Semi-palmated Plover. Note the lighter coloured legs.

More about leucism in birds

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A few blogs back I talked about how to go about having one's work published and sure enough a week later I find out one of my images was chosen for the cover of BC Birding.

 I sent the editor a few words to explain the who, what, where and why behind the image. Remembering that the editor is compiling a myriad of information from many sources, he's also correcting typos and errors and then finally the magazine has to be laid out. It's a tremendous amount of work and takes skill and perseverance, especially when done on a volunteer basis. I say this because writers and photographers need to make the editors job as easy as possible

The LeConte's Sparrow which appears on the cover was a target bird for many in the group and thanks to our group leaders everyone had great views. LeConte's prefer undisturbed damp fields. On reflection I would have preferred to have photographed the bird from more of a side angle but I didn’t want to risk flushing it before everyone had had a good view. Thanks to Brian Paterson for getting us on the bird.

 The Peace River region is somewhere I had always wanted to visit. Situated in the northern part of British Columbia, the Peace Region is a three-thousand kilometre round trip journey from Vancouver.

Three days of hard-core birding were slated for June 11–13 following the BCFO convention in Tumbler Ridge.

Twenty birders were split into two groups. Mark Phinney and Brian Paterson were group leaders.

Based in Dawson Creek and led by Brian, our group visited numerous birding hotspots including Swan Lake, Road 201 and McQueen Slough. Day 2 saw us visit Fort St. John where we birded Beaton Park and Boundary Lake, Watson Slough as well as spots in-between.

Back Cover

The Lazuli Bunting photo (back cover) was taken on my way home on the West Fraser Road just south of Quesnel. The area has been in the epicentre of the massive BC fires and many of the stunning areas I visited are now charred beyond recognition. The forest will re-generate

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and
then more good and surprising news came from Nikon

Congratulations! Your Contest Entry has been selected to become a Gallery Tour

Finalist in the 2017 Nikon NPS Member Exhibition Photo Contest

The image below was taken at the Jantar Mantar Open Air Observatory, Jaipur India. 

More about Jantar Mantar



Now all I need is to find some godwits.

John Gordon

Langley/Cloverdale 

BC Canada