Duck Break

Enough ducks for a while. These are some other birds that I photographed in the past week or so.

Red-winged Blackbird males have returned and are staking out their territories before the females arrive. They aggressively maintain a bit of real estate and offer nesting sites to one or more females. A male with a really good location ends up with a harem. The bright wing patches are used to signal other males that they are trespassing.

Another member of the Blackbirds is the Common Grackle. It isn’t totally black or even common looking in the right lighting. Check out the irridescence.

Purple Sandpipers winter along our coast. They like to get right down to the edge of the water despite any surf. The guy in the bottom photo got a bath!

This is a Cooper’s Hawk that may have been starting a nest. It will probably restart nearby since the site it chose was directly over the main path into a state park. There is a lot of foot traffic, including dogs, so it is pretty busy. I’m pretty sure this is a female since it was quite large. And like most raptors, the females are larger than the males.