Category: Blogging

Where you find American Avocets, you will usually find Black-Necked Stilts. Bear River is no exception, though on this visit we saw a lot more Avocets than Stilts. I tend to prefer pictures of Avocets to pictures of Black-Necked Stilts, but that doesn’t stop me from trying to get good shots of the Stilts.

Usually, I prefer close-ups like this shot of a Stilt probing the mud flats for food,

or this shot of one taken at medium range with it’s reflection in the water,

but my favorite shot on this visit was this long shot showing the stilt in its natural habitat.

Sometimes I think we let our equipment determine what we photograph and how we photograph it. There’s no arguing that expensive equipment can capture better photographs when used well, but our equipment also tends to determine what we emphasize in our photography. I’ve spent a lot of money on telephoto lenses (probably far too much), so I tend to emphasize closeups and ignore better shots I might have gotten if I’d backed off the zoom.

Close-ups can show us details we would otherwise never see, but they eliminate the surrounding environment. By necessity, the photographer feels that environment, but it can’t be experienced in the same way sitting in front of a computer screen.

The Avocets we saw on the alternate auto tour were acting very differently from the large group pictured on the previous blog entry. They were acting the way I would expect them to act after years of photographing them. All of them we saw on the temporary auto route were paired up and feeding together,

or nesting, with a mate standing protectively nearby.

We saw several nesting beside the road, so close that I worried about the safety of their chicks when they hatched.

The only violence we saw here was an American Avocet chasing away a Black-Necked Stilt that might have been too close to its nest.

I’ll have to admit that if we didn’t live so far away, I would be there regularly to get shots of the Avocet chicks about now.

I’ve been photographing Avocets so long I seldom see (or capture) anything I haven’t already recorded. However, this scene was unlike anything I had ever seen before. In fact, I am still unable to figure out what was going on and whether or not it is a normal part of mating season.

It was rowdy enough that it reminded me of nearly forgotten nights at closing time in bars when there were not enough women for everyone who had spent the evening getting drunk. I’ll have to admit, though, that it might be easier for me to understand what was going on if I could tell the difference between male and female avocets.

These four Avocets caught my attention because they clearly squabbling among each other and one was nearly submerged.

The argument seemed to end when one of the Avocets chased another one away,

but then a different Avocet chased the other two away

It wasn’t long, though, before they were back again and definitely fighting, or attempting to have sex.

Even more landed shortly afterwards and continued the squabble.

I couldn’t really find anything online that explained what is going on, but several sources noted that aggression is common during breeding season and there is a phenomena known as “circling” that seems suggested by the last shot.

We knew it was too early to see American Avocet chicks when we visited Bear River, but we saw virtually ever other stage of courtship and mating behavior.

Yes, we did see a few solitary Avocets close to the road but it was impossible to tell whether or not they had a mate sitting on a nest nearby.

We certainly saw more Avocets necking and

foraging together than we saw alone.

This seemed to be the peaceful, dreamy side of Avocet mating, but we also observed some much more aggressive behavior, something I’ve never seen in past sightings, but you’ll have to wait a little longer to see those photos.