White-crowned sparrow in a sea of wildflowers, Point Reyes National Seashore

A white-crowned sparrow perched in the summer wildflowers along the Kehoe Beach Trail in Point Reyes National Seashore.

As I've mentioned in a previous post, the Kehoe Beach Trail is one of my favorite places to look for wildlife hiding in the sea of wildflowers that line the trail. I generally don't target song birds when I'm out looking for wildlife to photograph, mostly because I find it can be rather challenging to get close enough to obtain a bird that is relatively large in the frame and unobstructed by branches and such. However, a setting like this is, in my opinion, a great place to leave a lot of space around the birds. I particularly liked the layering to the wildflowers in this frame, with the white flowers extending on tall stalks above the yellow blooms.

View more photos from the Kehoe Beach area in Point Reyes National Seashore.

Sparrow singing on a curved branch, Point Reyes National Seashore

A white-crowned sparrow sings along the Abbott's Lagoon Trail in Point Reyes National Seashore.

While looking for songbirds to photograph on my recent trip to Point Reyes National Seashore, my primary objective was to capture them perched in front of wildflowers. Of course, it wasn't always possible to get a bright, colorful backdrop in each frame. I was drawn into this scene by the old, weathered branch of coyote brush that this white-crowned sparrow was perched on. Even better, a distant hillside provided a clean background of neutral colors for the shot as it started to sing. This otherwise drab bird provided its own splash of color though, flashing its green and orange leg bands.

Browse more of my photos of song birds.

White-crowned sparrow with a beak full of bugs, Point Reyes National Seashore

A white-crowned sparrow brings a beak full of bugs back to its young in Point Reyes National Seashore.

During my recent trip to Point Reyes National Seashore, I dedicated a fair amount of time to photographing song birds among the early summer wildflowers. The first stretch of the Tomales Point Trail was absolutely covered in colorful wild radish and the trail to Kehoe Beach was also lined with dense wildflowers. These shots were taken on the trail to Abbott's Lagoon, which doesn't have as high of a density of wildflowers, but the yellow bush lupine was in full bloom (and provides the splash of yellow in the background here).

A white-crowned sparrow looks around before returning to feed its young.

While I didn't see any nests, there were definite signs of young birds around with the parents bringing back beaks full of bugs. In the high-res version of these photos, you can clearly see that this sparrow returned with at least two grass hoppers crammed into its tiny beak. While on a much different scale, this behavior reminded me of seeing photographs of puffins returning to the cliffs with a mouthful of fish (definitely something on my lifetime photographic wishlist!).

View more photos of songbirds perched on wildflowers in my Song Birds Gallery.

Peeking Sparrow, Point Reyes National Seashore

A white-crowned sparrow peeks over the branches of a coyote bush along the Abbott's Lagoon Trail in Point Reyes National Seashore last June. This shot is from a terrific early summer day spent in the park. There was a late-season rain system moving through the area that would bring rain later that day, so the sky was filled with gorgeous purple clouds and nice diffuse light.

View more photographs of sparrows in my Song Birds Gallery.

White-crowned sparrow, Point Reyes National Seashore

A white-crowned sparrow backlit with morning light along Limantour Spit in Point Reyes National Seashore.

White-crowned sparrow

This lovely sparrow was hanging out along the trail that connects Ellis Creek Water Recycling Facility and Shollenberger Park in Petaluma.

Sparrow on a Stick, Point Reyes National Seashore

On this hike along the Kehoe Beach Trail in Point Reyes National Seashore, the wildflowers were nearly overgrowing the trail. It was quite an experience to walk through a sea of flowers nearly as tall as I was, and the birds seemed to be enjoying it even more than me. This is a white-crowned sparrow that had perched itself in an area of all yellow flowers.

Sparrows and flowers

Another handful of sparrow shots from along the Tomales Point Trail in Point Reyes National Seashore. I believe these are white-crowned sparrows, one of the three sparrow species I was able to photograph on this hike (the Song sparrow in my previous post, and some Savannah sparrows that will appear in a future post).



This one landed in the lupine and started pecking at the flowers. I suspect looking for some kind of seed? Although I'm not sure.



As I was walking down the trail, some of the birds would occasionally take cover below the tops of the vegetation, but this one was particularly curious while hiding on the underside of some cow parsnip.

Singing loud and clear

I've always hoped to get some shots of songbirds singing, and this sparrow at Limantour Beach in Point Reyes was most happy to oblige.



It sang and sang while I slowly rotated around its branch to try a few different angles, getting some of the sandstone cliffs and some of the sky as the backdrop.



Finishing up its last note:





I also wanted to remind everyone the 2010 Defenders of Wildlife Photo Contest voting period runs until Sunday, April 4 at 5pm Eastern. If you haven't already, I would like to encourage you to go to their site to vote for my image of Tomales Bay State Park, which was selected as a finalist. You can learn more about the contest and see my image in my previous post. Thanks!

Great weekend for wildlife

I had a fantastic weekend for experiencing and photographing wildlife. We took a hike out to the end of Tomales Point in Point Reyes National Seashore, which goes through the Tule Elk Reserve there. We must have seen at least 100 elk along the trail! Then we also took our annual trip to Ano Nuevo State Reserve to see the elephant seals and their breeding season antics. As you can see here, this image is neither an elk or seal, but it was a shot that I had already processed and was just waiting to be uploaded. So since I have a few thousand shots to go through from this weekend and haven't had the time to do so yet, this is what I've got for now.



This shot was taken in a small dog park along the Bay Trail in Marin County near Bothin Marsh on Richardson Bay. I had used up the good morning light in the marsh but decided to wander up the trail to see if there was anything else interesting around. I wasn't expecting much, but a group of these little guys were playing in the shadows of some trees that hadn't yet seen the light of morning. This gave me some nice even lighting instead of the harshness that was in the rest of the park.