Colorado was unseasonably warm this January. All the more reason to get out and enjoy nature.

On Saturday I went out on the plains one hour east of Boulder to the Wild Animal Sanctuary and shot the typical tourist photos of lions, tigers, and bears (literally). But my best — closest — shots were of common birds. I was amazed that thousands of European Starling were hanging around, most likely to grab some of the meat the large animals got at too slowly.

A European Starling is Quite Colorful When It is Close Enough

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Snowy Owls nest in the Arctic tundra of the northernmost stretches of Alaska, Canada, and Eurasia. They usually winter through southern Canada and Eurasia. Rarely do they fly down to the Lower 48.

But some of them are here now. Birders call this an “irruption,” probably the result of the boom and bust population cycle of their preferred prey, lemmings.

The vast majority of Snowy Owls in the Lower 48 this winter are in the East, according to eBird. People have spotted some snowies as far west as Washington and Oregon. And three or four of these magnificent raptors have landed in Colorado.

I have been chasing them all year. On New Year’s Day I drove 120 miles to the Aurora Reservoir, after reading a report on CoBirds that one was there. No luck. Then, on Tuesday I drove 80 miles after reading reports that people had seen two Snowy Owls on a snowy field two miles from Barr Lake. Again no luck.

I figured that the off chance of seeing a Snowy Owl was worth a third trip. After all, I had made three trips in April and May before I could see a Mandarin Duck. So this morning I went back to the fields near Barr Lake.

We had perfect weather for photography today. After a light snow yesterday, the skies are completely clear, and we have no wind. Rather than planning to be there at first light, I consciously waited until mid-morning, because I didn’t know where I would find the owls. I didn’t want to have to shoot right into the sun.

But this morning after driving the length of Harvest Road, where people had reported them, I looked everywhere but saw only a couple of hawks. No owls. On my second pass along the road, there they were in a field to the west. But so far away that I could barely see them. Still, I rejoiced in seeing the first Snowy Owls of my life. Birders call this “a life bird.”

Then, another photographer came by and told me that they were closer to 136th Street, which was a right turn just ahead. They were closer, but still a speck. Then, I thought that they could be closer yet from Gun Club Road, another right turn. And they were closer, although still far away.

The Darker -- Younger -- Snowy Owl

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When I went out to feed the ducks at Tantra Lake this afternoon, all but one came running to me. Until I took a close look at it, I wondered why one of them held back.

The ones that waddled or flew right to me were Mallards, who knew me well. The one that stayed put looked a little different. When I got close enough to it, I could see that it was an American Wigeon, a newcomer to Tantra Lake.

A Newcomer to Tantra Lake

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Eventually, the American Wigeon overcame its shyness and joined the crowd.

Feeding among the Mallards

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This morning I drove 40 miles each way in a vain quest to see a Snowy Owl that the Colorado Birds mailing list had been reported on a snowy field in Brighton, Colorado. If I had found the owl, it would probably have been just a speck in the distance. And the photo would certainly have been dull, because dark clouds hid the sun all day.

But sitting at my desk at 3:30, I saw that the sun had finally broken through today’s heavy cloud cover. Since I knew that the sun would sink behind the foothills in just half an hour, the undeveloped South Campus of the University of Colorado that adjoins the complex where I live was my best choice for exercise in the sun today.

The last light of day was beautiful, and all that I then sought was a bird. And walking down a side trail, I found one of our smallest woodpeckers.

A male Downy Woodpecker was pecking away in a small cottonwood right next to the trail and was oblivious to me. Just before the light faded, I got off 275 shots in three minutes flat.

These are my favorite shots today:

The Downy Woodpecker Rests Between Pecks

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Then, it flew away.

The Downy Woodpecker Leaves Me

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But, then, in less that five minutes the sun went down anyway.

Since today is Christmas, you might expect that I would have charity for all, as Lincoln did in his Second Inaugural Address. But I don’t feel charitable to the sweet little squirrel that spends most of its time in the Russian olive tree in front of my apartment.

The Sweet Squirrel in its Tree

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These are hard times for birds in Colorado. Almost all the water in the lakes and streams is frozen solid and snow covers everything. Yesterday about a foot and one-half of snow fell here. The temperature dropped to 8° last night.

But this morning was cloudless and the temperature had warmed up to about 17° when Sharon and I went snowshoeing from Walden Ponds to Boulder Creek. We looked for wading birds, but they had no place to wade and I took no photographs.

Then, as I sat in my easy chair reading a novel on my Kindle Touch I looked out my living room window. Right below my bird feeder was a Northern Flicker digging in the snow. This colorful member of the woodpecker family is the only woodpecker species that regularly feeds on the ground.

My guess is that the food it found was a piece of suet that it or another Northern Flicker had dropped from the bird feeder. I slowly opened the window (from which I had already removed the screen) and took several hundred shots in rapid succession. This was the best one:

A Flicker Finds Frozen Food

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Then, I switched my camera to movie mode. You can see this Northern Flicker in action for a few seconds on YouTube here:

How would you like to have to dig for your next meal in the snow?

Sandhill Cranes are definitely the biggest draw at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge near Socorro, New Mexico. In the fields they eat surrounded by an even greater number of Snow Geese. I never saw so many birds in my life. I also never saw so many photographers, almost all of them with single-lens reflex cameras and long lenses mounted on heavy tripods. Just like me and the other people in my photo safari.

But Bosque attracts many other species of birds, albeit in smaller numbers. One morning our tour leader Russ Burden took us to the ponds on the grounds of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, the university in Socorro. There we saw quite a few American Wigeons and other wading birds. And we were the only people there.

A Male American Wigeon Lands Tail First

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The Sandhill Cranes at Bosque were what initially attracted me to New Mexico in early December. That and learning from a master photographer, Russ Burden.

Russ’s tour led me and three other photographers first to White Sands National Monument. In five days at White Sands I took only 630 photos. But in the four days at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge near Socorro I made 2,604 shots. Selecting my favorites took a little time.

Bosque has lots of Sandhill Cranes. It is one of their few wintering areas. But I was surprised to see even more Snow Geese than Sandhill Cranes.

Snow Geese Blast Off in the Morning

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I went to the White Sands National Monument to take pictures of yuccas.

Now, yuccas have been a part of my life since growing up the San Gabriel Mountains as a kid when I sat down on one by mistake. A mistake that I for some reason have never forgotten.

So, I am not particularly fond of yuccas. And I don’t normally think of yuccas as being particularly photogenic.

But a professional photographer can make yuccas interesting. Russ Burden is that sort of photographer. He showed me and three other photography students how to photograph the soaptree yuccas of White Sands.

Mountains and Yucca

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But, of course, we saw much more than yuccas. We shot the white gypsum dunes and surrounding mountains in all their patterns, shapes, and textures.

Morning at White Sands

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If the storm hadn’t closed the park, we wouldn’t have seen the oryx.

The gate to White Sands National Monument was locked when we arrived there on December 6. I was there with three other photographers on a photo safari that Russ Burden led.

Russ had led the incredible tour of the Everglades that I took with him in February. Russ is both a top-flight professional photographer and a dedicated teacher. I had learned so much from him on that tour that I made sure to go with him again, particularly after another participant on the Everglades tour, the gifted photographer Cheryl Tyson, told me how great his New Mexico tour is.

Cheryl was absolutely right about New Mexico. But any December tour there risks bad weather. If we had tried to get there a couple of days earlier, all the roads leading there would have been closed. Heavy snow had stopped all traffic at Socorro, and they had opened the highway just as we reached that town. Beyond Socorro the roads were icy but passable, and we looked forward to exploring White Sands that evening.

But because of the oryx, we couldn’t get to the park. The oryx come from Africa, and the only ones I had ever seen were in Somalia in 1963. These oryx, however, came from the Kalahari Desert. The New Mexico Fish and Game Department released 93 of them onto the White Sands Missile Range, which surrounds the national monument, between 1969 and 1973. They did so well there that the U.S. Park Service spent more than $1 million to fence them out of the national monument.

We too were fenced out. And no park service employees were at work when we got there. This wasn’t in the plan.

But just after we left the locked gate, Donna, one of the three other photographers on the Russ’s tour, spotted five large animals, each weighing about 400 to 500 pounds with straight black horns up to 40 inches long. So all of us, including Jamie from Washington, D.C., and Katy, who works in Luanda, Angola, but also lives in Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, piled out to photograph them. Russ said that in all the years he had led tours to White Sands he had never seen oryx here. When I took a backpacking trip here in 2008, I didn’t even know about the oryx.

Two of the Oryx We Saw Outside of White Sands

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