Swanquarter and Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuges

We headed out to Swanquarter National Wildlife Refuge first thing one morning. The birds that winter there had already left. We tried to walk silently on the decking to get close enough to take good photographs of terns and gulls that are always around.

I watched an osprey dive successfully for a fish but the bird was too far away to get a really good picture.

Our next stop was Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge. This refuge had many groups of coots.

There were egrets fishing in the shallow water. I managed to get a fuzzy picture of one becoming airborne….different enough from the stalking poses I usually capture.

The turtles line up on anything in the sun. This morning was chilly.

I liked this grouping of cormorants. There were some noisy Canadian geese nearby so they did not hold this pose for very long.

The male and female pintail ducks swimming single file was my best sighting at this refuge. I captured these pictures by leaning out of the open car window!

Zooming - February 2015

It is often hard to find color in the middle of winter. The colors seem to be mostly white and brown…so the bits of color are appreciated more:

• The flower and fiddlehead in the green house
• The red of a pigeon’s eye
• The flash of blue when a jay pushes the leaves around in the forest
• The blue sky on a sunny day
• The blue powder design on a butterfly’s wing

It is very cold today and there is still snow on the ground from a few days ago. But I enjoy the scene of the forest in winter from my office window - staying warm indoors.

Enjoy the February zoomed images!