Category: Northern California

There’s no doubt that one of the highlights of visiting Lake Ralphine in Santa Rosa is the chance to photograph the swans closeup. Although I occasionally see migrating swans in Washington, I’ve never had the chance to shoot them up close. Of course, the year-round swans in Lake Ralphine are hardly â€?”wild,” but their beauty more than makes up for any lack of wildness.

I can’t resist the beauty of shots like this.

Eventually, though, beauty, at least â€?”accepted” beauty, is not enough. You begin to search for new ways to see your subject. For instance, it’s probably the expressive curve of the swan’s neck that sets it apart from most birds, but a closeup like this shows better just how long that neck really is.

Seen in isolation, that neck reminds me a lot of an ostrich, not a bird that’s ever struck me as particularly â€?”beautiful.”

Seen from a different angle, the swan’s beak seems quite remarkable,

even more so if you click on the picture to enlarge it and examine the rows of â€?”teeth.” In the end beauty, indeed, seems to follow function.

That long, graceful neck and unique beak make it possible for the swan to find food where smaller birds would find it difficult if not impossible.

After disappearing into Dragon Age Inquisition and nearly two weeks of solid rain, I gladly agreed to go with Leslie on a whirlwind trip to Santa Rosa to visit her brother Jeff and to handle some legal documents last week even though two long days of driving seems excessive for a five-day trip; our usual trips are 7 to 9 days long, and even those often haven’t seemed long enough.

Still, I managed to get in two walks around Spring Lake, one with Jeff and Leslie, and another Friday afternoon after Jeff and Debbie had taken off for home. It seemed auspicious that the first bird we saw on our walk was an Acorn Woodpecker, a bird only rarely sighted in the Pacific Northwest. Even better, the day was sunny and we were walking downhill, so the woodpecker was only slightly above us.

Although they’re not my favorite â€?”poses,” these shots did manage to capture more detail than most of the ones I’ve taken before.

I still haven’t managed to wade through all the shots I took in California, but apparently we managed to drag some sunshine back with us so I had to walk Theler today. Not sure what’s planned for tomorrow, but if it as sunny as the weather forecast calls for I doubt I will be able to sit in front of a computer working on photos. After all, I’m sure there’s lots of rain left this winter and spring, the best time to sit inside working on a computer.

If I lived in Northern California I’d probably have a hard drive full of Acorn Woodpeckers and not a hard drive full of Great Blue Heron or Belted Kingfisher. I only discovered them a few years ago and even more recently at Lake Ralphine.

Originally I was attracted to them because of their striking features, the bright red cap, the white face and the distinctive beak.

They didn’t look like any other woodpecker I’ve ever seen.

Later, though, I was attracted to their behavior. They often seem curious about that weird guy with the camera. Even if they fly off at first, they will often return shortly and look intently at me.

Their behavior is intriguing, too. You can find trees with hundreds of acorns stored in tiny holes, but they also seem to be constantly foraging for food. allaboutbirds.org states that â€?”Besides nuts and insects, Acorn Woodpeckers also eat fruit, sap, oak catkins, and flower nectar, along with occasional grass seeds, lizards, and even eggs of their own species.”

Of course, the more you photograph any bird the more you begin to notice about them. In these recent closeups I was particularly intrigued by their claws, particularly the size in relationship to the rest of their body.

It doesn’t hurt that it’s impossible to miss these woodpeckers when they are around because they live in large families, another unusual trait.