photo: Wild turkeys along Bear Creek Road, 2010

Here’s an oldie but goodie: a 2004 photo from a trip to San Blas, Mexico, where we encountered this cow gazing at us from a riverbank. That white blur is a cattle egret.

Photo: Cow, hand colored black and white, 2004

The wild turkeys are back.

Yesterday I looked out and saw nine of them foraging in the orchard. We ran them out last summer when our back porch became overrun by turkeys and turkey poop as they hung out, day in and day out, underneath our bird feeders. (A few days with a loop of electric fence got the message across.)

Still, I was sad when they left altogether, so it was fun to see them again.

And I made a serendipitous discovery. Walking outside with my camera, I inadvertently split the flock in half. Five, probably including one or two matriarchal hens, headed uphill and across the driveway. The other four headed down into the pasture. And then they realized I was in the middle.

Turns out turkeys really don’t like being separated. The older hens stopped and turned around and approached the driveway and began to call to the missing youngsters, who stopped, turned around and called back. And then they, too, began moving towards me.

Wild turkeys, even these pretty acclimated ones, are tough to convince to pose for photos. Typical turkey photos show way too many turkey backsides as the subjects quickly flee.

But because I had split the flock, I had lot of opportunity to shoot turkey portraits.

Live and learn.

photo: Wild turkeys, 2010

This junco whacked itself semi conscious on the back window this afternoon. I brought it in to warm up for a moment, then photographed it with Noah and we sent it on its way.

photo: Junco, 2010

I shot this photo today to go with an article my son is doing on motorless birding — people who keep lists of birds they’ve discovered within walking/biking distance of their homes.

It was late on a cloudy, foggy winter afternoon and I was shooting with the Pentax K20D. While I love the camera, it just really, really isn’t up to autofocusing under trying conditions. I shoulda used the Canon. The whole thing made my head spin with thoughts of dumping the Pentax and consolidating back to a single Canon system.

Then I calmed down….

photo: Noah, 2010