Just a simple portrait of an extraordinarily common bird. We have a small flock of Canada geese that winters at work, with a few cackling geese sometimes present too, but since they make a mess of the sidewalks I think I’m the only one that is happy to see them. To me they are also a reminder that beauty lies not too far outside my cubicle walls.

This picture was taken not at work but at, well, you can probably guess.

I’ve seen bitterns catch a wide variety of animals, but even so I was caught by surprise when this one struck into the grass and emerged with a large earthworm. I knew some songbirds like robins ate worms but bitterns join egrets and kestrels as birds I was surprised to see hunting the wiggly worm.

A male ring-necked duck swims through duckweed in Bower Slough.

Normally I visit Ridgefield without a specific agenda in mind, but on this day I went under strict orders from Ellie to scout out her competition in the Greater Ridgefield Hedgehog Invitational. She had nothing to worry about.

Now when it comes time for the Townsend’s Vole Catching Competition, on the other hand …

In this dark and dying day
I know he sits and watches.

First you will come to the Sirens who enchant all who come near them. If any one unwarily draws in too close and hears the singing of the Sirens, his wife and children will never welcome him home again, for they sit in a green field and warble him to death with the sweetness of their song. There is a great heap of dead men’s bones lying all around, with the flesh still rotting off them. Therefore pass these Sirens by, and stop your men’s ears with wax that none of them may hear; but if you like you can listen yourself, for you may get the men to bind you as you stand upright on a cross-piece half way up the mast, and they must lash the rope’s ends to the mast itself, that you may have the pleasure of listening.
Circe’s warning to Odysseus in Homer’s The Odyssey

I visit Ridgefield alone, intentionally alone, and have no men to lash me to the steering wheel that I might safely pass my Sirens, the bitterns that lurk at the edges of the marsh. Thus am I always compelled to stop, for seconds, minutes, even hours. A day may yet come when I have watched them enough, photographed them enough, that I can pass them by, but for now I am powerless to resist my Siren’s call.

I don’t get to see blue-winged teal very often so it was both a privilege and a joy to watch a mated pair this spring at Ridgefield. What a magnificent creature!

One of the distinguishing marks of killdeer compared to our other plovers is their distinctive double breastband. Except when they are babies, that is, as when they first hatch they have but a single band. At such a young age their stubby little wings only hint at the majesty of flight that is to come.

It rained, then poured. The king and I, we waited.

I arrived early with the fog, which soon lifted to reveal a day both cloudy and surprisingly warm. I spent the first couple of hours at Horse Lake, a small pond at the start of the auto tour, delighted with the opportunity to finally photograph the beautiful American wigeon. Wigeon are common at Ridgefield during the winter but I had always struggled to photograph them.

I made this note in my journal later in the day:

“Took me almost five hours to make my first loop of the auto tour. Sadly I don’t think that’s even close to being a record for me.”

It was a good day.

This American wigeon drake shows off his dabbling technique, tipping forward with his head underwater, eating plant life from the floor of the lake, while kicking with his webbed feet to hold his position.

Double-crested cormorants aren’t exactly rare at Ridgefield but they aren’t exactly common either. What is rare is to get such a nice close view, this one had just surfaced from fishing the waters of Bower Slough. The eyes of the cormorant are one of my favorites in all the bird kingdom.

The year got off to a cold start and when I arrived at Ridgefield early in the morning on January 2nd, I was pleased to see that some of the waters of the refuge had frozen over. I had several opportunities during the day to take pictures that included the ice and had to work quickly for most of the them. It started with sunrise over the frozen Horse and Long Lakes, and ended late in the day with a raccoon testing the melting ice.

In the middle of the morning I was delighted to find these two otters that had just surfaced through a hole in the ice covering Bower Slough. I hoped to get pictures of them frolicking on the ice, it had started to melt as you can see by the thin layer of water in the back, but it was still plenty strong for them to run on. But I was only able to get this picture, the otter in the back is looking off to its left and soon what got its attention sent them both shrieking across the ice. I looked behind me to see what could possibly have spooked them with such alarm, a behavior I’ve not seen before, and got my answer as a large SUV came barreling past.

I met this little long-toed salamander on the path to the observation blind at Ridgefield on an unusually cool spring morning. At first I thought it might just be cold and took my gloves off to warm it in my hands, but as I bent down I realized it was dead. Yet as I gently lifted it off the ground there was a slight twitch in its tail. Its arms and legs were desiccated, its eyes closed, and it looked to me like its body was shutting down. I’ve only ever seen salamanders at Ridgefield in the last moments of their lives, usually getting plucked from a hiding spot by hungry herons and bitterns, but this is the first time I’ve seen one up close.

I held it for a little while, hoping against hope, but when I finally set it down beside the path one last shiver trembled through its body and it never moved again. I’ve loved salamanders since I was a little boy so I was a little teary-eyed walking back to the car, consoling myself that I gave it all we can really hope for at the end, a warm hand to hold as we die.

I came across this marsh wren building its nest on a rainy spring day at Ridgefield. Before trying for pictures I watched it for a while to pick up its patterns and noticed it frequented two locations the most, the reeds above its nest where it would perch to sing, and some nearby cattails where it gathered nesting materials. I have a number of singing wren pictures so I opted for the cattails, and while I did get some nice pictures of it collecting fluff for its nest, I was surprised to find that one of my favorite pictures from the series was this picture of the wren doing absolutely nothing.

The wren frenetically flew between the cattails and its nest, sang to establish its territory, and hid from predators and others like the aggressive red-winged blackbird that periodically swooped down and landed at the nest. So I suppose I just like that, at least in the picture, the wet little brown bird can pause and rest in perpetuity.

A white-breasted nuthatch fledgling opens its mouth wide as its parent arrives with freshly caught insects. White-breasted nuthatches are cavity nesters, the adult below is sticking its head out of the nest as it prepares to fly off in search of more food for its hungry offspring. Adult nuthatches eat insects as well as seeds and nuts, but during the time I watched them the adults were only bringing insects to their brood.

As a child I was terrified not of Yuri Andropov but Leonid Brezhnev — not his politics but his eyebrows. When this agitated ruddy duck furrowed his head feathers into giant eyebrows I couldn’t help but think of the former Soviet leader. It was breeding season (for the duck, not the Soviets) and the male was annoyed by another in the area (his tail is also raised in defiance).

I’m not a biologist, but if you’re a Townsend’s vole and find yourself in this situation, you’re not having a good day.

A nearly straight-on look nicely shows the round eyes on the sides of the cottontail’s head that provide it with a wide field of view.

A tree swallow in the late spring takes a brief break from hunting for insects on the wing over the waters of Long Lake.