My birding weekend

This is where I live.....

The wild, wild west.  NO kidding.  Remember the TV show Bonanza?  Filmed just a couple of hours from here.  And the Ponderosa was open for tourists up until a few years ago.  (sigh.....)
But, back to me.... Nevada is a puzzle.  Because I was standing in the same exact place in the road when I took this picture above...then turned around  180 degrees and took this:

It was a grove of trees!!
see the baby owlet?  It's a Great Horned Owl, owlet.

I don't exactly live here,  right in this exact spot where the picture was taken, but this is  still in Northern Nevada, just a mere two hours from my house.    Who knew that  the dry  'high desert'  is a stopping point for so many species of migratory birds?  Not me!  Not until I discovered bird watching a few years ago and started attending the Spring  Wings Festival with my friends.

The Spring Wings Birding and Outdoor Festival celebrates International Migratory Bird Day, as well as the return of thousands of migrating songbirds, shorebirds, raptors and waterfowl to the Lahontan Valley.

THOUSANDS!  That's a  lot of birds!!  Altho, this year  was a lot dryer than it was last year, so while we saw over  45 different species of birds, we didn't see the concentration of them like we did last year.  We had a great time, we laughed a lot and ate too much and  spent time in the hot Nevada Sun,  I got pulled over by a policeman (no comment.  But I didn't get a ticket),  ate more, shopped a little, and as always, found a bird or two we hadn't seen before.

I'm going to share a few of my pictures tonight, and then write up another 'birding' post to share in a couple of days.

These are some old  (and maybe young) coots taking off from the water.  I know a coot, isn't technically a duck, but to me it is.  They look exactly like Daffy Duck! 

They work really hard to take off  from the water.  I love watching them.  It's almost like they can't make it, they flap and run and flap and run and then.....FLIGHT!

A bird...NOT, a duck or a water fowl.  A Yellow-Headed blackbird.

This workshop was a class on how to photograph wildlife.....

and the cows were as wild as anything I came upon.
(I kinda like cows for some reason)

In other news....I just thought this shot was funny....the first thing we all did when we got out of the van, was set up our cameras on our tripods.

This guy flew overhead during our photography workshop.  They really are a pretty bird.
The Pelican

and I just liked the reflection of the russion olive trees/bushes in the water

and finally, before I hit the sack.... a picture of

my friends!

Bird Nerds.