Welcome to the latest offering from Life Intrigued. I had quite the debate with myself on the topic for today’s post. Should I go with a discussion on the results of a key bird hunt? Maybe a summary of the various happenings while we were in Vegas (when you run a blog, there is no such thing as What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas – rather What Happens in Vegas is Another Post!). I do have another book recollection to get to, but need to get the graphics ready for that first. Why don’t I just close out the First Day at Henderson Series. I promise I’ll give you a break for at least two posts before diving into day two.
To wrap things up, I’m going to throw you a hodge podge of birds. None of these were firsts for me, but wanted to let you know that there was a nice collection of the more common birds to go along with all those new check marks. First off is the Northern Shoveler.
To say there was a lot of these hanging out at Henderson would be an understatement. There were actually more there than I’ve seen collectively at Havana’s Emiquon (link here). What did catch my attention was they isolated themselves to a specific pond. Not sure what the real attraction was, but it was one of two that had an island in the middle providing pretty good cover from the sun and Harriers circling the skies. You almost got the sense they were keeping one eye on the water and one eye looking for danger.
Of course, they may have seen what happens when you venture too close to the shores (link here). Fortunately, this didn’t prevent them from engaging in their unique feeding ritual. This was observed at Havana, but only two or three of the Shovelers were involved and didn’t give the full effect. At Henderson, they were in full whirlpool mode.
Reminds me when I was a kid and we would quickly traverse the outside edge of a neighbor’s pool to create a similar effect. Of course, we were not doing that to make food more accessible (wow, the thought of a Baby Ruth just crossed my mind hehehe).
Although not completely positive thanks to the number of female breeds that look a like, I think the following shot is of a Shoveler coming in for a landing. Both the water and wings were frozen in motion which is rather difficult to do with the Beast. Our lighter 2.4 70-200 is more handy for those kind of shots being easier to hit the focus marks and most of all LIGHTER!!
Hit the jump to see more of the birds of Henderson
