On Sunday afternoon when I looked out the window at my desk where I was working, I saw that the sky had cleared. For me clear skies = stop working. Since I live in Boulder, which brags about our 300 sunny days a year, that means I don’t get much work done.

My work indeed came to an immediate halt. I intended to drive to a favorite preserve, but just in case I could see some Tundra Swans that someone had reported at Baseline Reservoir, I stopped there and looked.

From the road I could see a flock of them in the distance. So I stopped there instead of going on. I parked my SUV on the south side of the reservoir at the dirt road behind a locked gate and crawled through the barbed wire fence. Then I walked back with my camera and tripod until the swans were at a right angle to this trail.

The swans were still several hundred yards out in the reservoir, so I was glad that I had mounted my teleconverter on my lens. That gave it a 560mm reach, but when I use a teleconverter with my camera and lens, I lose autofocus capability. Precise manual focus is much harder than autofocus, but since the light was good, I was able to stop down to f/16. That gave the lens a greater depth of field.

I also took a lot of pictures — 1,112 during my 1 1/4 hour visit — in hopes that some of them would turn out. Some did:

Two Adult Tundra Swans (Cygnus columbianus) and One Juvenile Rest on Baseline Reservoir (Canon 7D with 100-400mm lens and 1.4 teleconverter = equals 560mm, f/16, 1/500, ISO 800, -0.5ev)

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Before the snow of winter blankets all of Rocky Mountain National Park, my friend Sharon and I explored some of its elevations below 10,000 feet on Black Friday. But our day in the wilds was anything but black.

We started by hiking up Deer Mountain. Each of us had been there before separately, but I hadn’t been there since September 2008.

Deer Mountain is best for its views. In the photo below you can see Horseshoe Park in the foreground, and in the background, from left to right, is 12,454-foot Mount Chapin, which I climbed in August 2008, 13,069-foot Mount Chiquita, and 13,514-foot Ypsilon Mountain.

The View to the West from Deer Mountain (Panasonic DMC-TS3, 9mm, f/14, 1/125, ISO 400)

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Sharon and I returned to Adams County Regional Park on the morning of Thanksgiving Day. She had introduced me to this oasis in June 2010. About 30 miles east of here out on the high plains, this park has three or four lakes and one river.

The river is the South Platte, which flows into the Platte and thence into the Missouri, the Mississippi, and the Gulf of Mexico. The Platte figures in American history since the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery Expedition travelled it as far as possible as did the immigrants to the West in the years before the railroads came. Noted as being “a mile wide and an inch deep,” the river where we saw it wasn’t quite so wide and a bit deeper.

The South Platte Flows Through Adams County Regional Park (Canon 7D with 100-400mm lens at 100mm, f/16, 1/250, ISO 400)

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On one hand, McIntosh Lake in Longmont is too civilized for us. Much of the 3 1/2 mile path around this large lake is paved with cement. Both Sharon and I prefer to walk on dirt.

On the other hand, we found plenty of dirt. When I wandered off the path to get close to a group of American White Pelicans, I had to cross a mudflat. The mud got thicker and thicker and finally got so sticky that I couldn’t lift one of my boots out of it without going down on my knees and crawling back. I did get dirty, but of course protected my camera. It doesn’t like dirt as much as the little boy in me does.

Actually, I didn’t get any good shots of pelicans then. But an hour later both we and the pelicans had moved to the other end of the lake. Of course, they were in the lake, and we were next to it, and this time I wasn’t in the mud.

Pelicans are one of the largest birds in North America and among my favorites, especially because they seem to choreograph their movements in sync with each other. As they did here:

Three American White Pelicans (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos) Swim Together in McIntosh Lake (Canon 7D with 100-400mm lens at 400mm, f/8, 1/1000th, ISO 800)

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When my friend Marveen visits me from her home in Alaska, I make sure to show her Boulder’s beauty. The fall landscape at Sawhill Ponds is one of my favorite places, so that’s where we went on Monday.

The city of Boulder manages this open space as a wildlife preserve just east of the city limits. Except for a few maintained trails, several social trails, and the occasional overflight of planes taking off from the nearby Boulder Municipal Airport, this is a preserve for birds, fish, and animals, rather than people. That makes it all the more attractive to me.

Boulder Creek forms the western boundary. There we saw fish that were at least two feet long.

Boulder Creek Has Some Big Fish (Canon 7D with 100-400mm lens at 105mm, f/8, 1/30, ISO 800)

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On Sunday we knew that fall was quickly coming to an end with a snowstorm predicted for this week. So even though we knew we wouldn’t be alone on the trails, Sharon and I hiked on a weekend day anyway.

We hiked the trails on both sides of Clear Creek in Wheat Ridge’s Prospect Park. About 25 miles south of Boulder, where each of us live and only a dozen miles from downtown Denver, this lovely Park is an oasis in the city. And once we got more than a few feet from the parking lot we had the trails mostly to ourselves and the birds.

Sharon Hikes the Trail Along Clear Creek (Canon 7D with 18-200mm lens at 20mm, f/16, 1/180, ISO 800)

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Clear Creek Flows Through Prospect Park (Canon 7D with 100-400mm lens at 100mm, f/11, 1/180, ISO 800)

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A Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) Prepares to Attack (Canon 7D with 100-400mm lens at 400mm, f/8, 1/2000, ISO 800)

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We saw an many birds as people. And this hawk surrounded by fall foliage was my favorite.

We never saw so many wild turkeys before. Several times in the past few years Sharon and I had hiked the trails of Heil Valley Ranch, which starts just 12 miles north of Boulder. I know that I had seen two or three of these big birds on a hike there earlier this year. I’ve also seen individual birds or small groups on Green Mountain, Bonny Lake, and Rocky Mountain and Mesa Verde National Parks. But today we saw at least 46 of these colorful birds, none of which seemed the least bit afraid of becoming our Thanksgiving Dinner.

One of a Family of 28 Wild Turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) that We Saw at Near the Main Trailhead (Canon 7D with 100-400mm lens at 320mm, f/8, 1/3000, ISO 800)

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Sharon left her car at the main trailhead to Heil Valley Ranch, an important part of Boulder County’s North Foothills Open Space. Then we drove together in my SUV 12 miles north to a new and little-known trailhead at the end of Pyrite Way in Lyons, where I left my vehicle.

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Sawhill Ponds Wildlife Preserve, one of my favorite places to photograph birds, is less than 10 miles from my apartment in Boulder. I’ve gone there dozens of times, but never before did I focus entirely on photographing the landscape instead of wildlife.

This morning I had the opportunity to learn from Boulder’s most renowned landscape photographer, Chris Brown. He presented a program, “Fall in the Rockies: Landscape through Photography,” at Sawhill Ponds that the City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks department offered. I have known Chris for years and treasure my autographed copy of his book, Path of Beauty: Photographic Adventures in the Grand Canyon.

Chris led me and about a dozen other students of photography along two trails that I had never taken on any of my trips to Sawhill Ponds. When I mentioned that to him, Chris said that he had never taken those trails either. He told me that they just felt right to him today.

He was so right.

The temperature was a chilly 36 degrees and heavily overcast when we arrived and only warmed up to 45 degrees by the time we left three hours later. Since we found our scenes only a short distance along the trails, we didn’t even get the chance for much exercise to warm us up. But in compensation for our cold hands and noses I not only got some photographs I would have otherwise missed but also earned much from Chris about photography, particularly about exposure, focus, and composition.

Panorama of One of the Sawhill Ponds (Canon 7D with 18-200mm lens at 18mm, f/16, 1/180, ISO 400)

At 4:18 p.m. EDT on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong said simply, “The Eagle has landed.” With these four words the world knew that humans had made the first landing on the Moon.

That evening I was on tour in Malawi, where I was AID Affairs Officer in charge of the American aid program helping that African country. I vividly remember crowding around a large table in the guest house near Nsanje at the far southern end of the country with members of my staff and others from the American Embassy. As we listened to my shortwave radio it was almost midnight in Malawi when the Eagle landed, but a big cheer went up from that table.

This afternoon I recalled that great moment in history when the opposite occurred. The Eagle that landed on the Moon was one of the most sophisticated machines we ever built. The eagle that I saw flying today was sophisticated in its own way, but it was a marvel of nature. And instead of listening by radio I saw with my eyes and camera.

I saw a pair of Bald Eagles hiking the Cradleboard Trail that makes a loop through the Carolyn Holmberg Preserve near the southeast corner of Boulder County. Under sunny skies the temperature here reached 73 degrees, so of course I was on the trail.

One of the eagles perched on a bare tree, offering me a clear shot with my camera. Then as it started to fly, I took these pictures.

A Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) Perches at the Top of a Tree at 4:38:06 PM MST (Canon 7D with 100-400mm lens at 400mm, f/8, 1/2000, ISO 800)

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For two days Boulder’s typically sunny skies went elsewhere. Instead, cold weather, rain, and a dusting of snow appeared, each heralding the arrival of fall.

Then, today the sun returned, and it was seemingly brighter than ever. Temperatures in the mid-50s replaced those near freezing.

The weather called for me to go outside. It called so loudly that both my camera and my Kindle heard it.

My Kindle reminded me that a few months ago I had discovered a reading bench with a great view overlooking the Coot Lake wetlands. A little loop around the lake and the wetlands gave both my Kindle and my camera something to do en route to the bench this afternoon.

My Kindle showed me a book about birds that I have been reading. When I looked up from the screen to the beautiful landscape, I saw real birds. They were all common species — robins, blackbirds, and ducks. But I didn’t expect more, so I was happy.

Once when I looked up I saw a robin in the closest tree. Most photographers won’t bother with such common birds, but I always will. I always hope to see them do something special. This one spread its wings for me.

An American Robin (Turdus migratorius) Says It Likes Russian Olives (Canon 7D with 100-400mm lens at 400mm, f/8, 1/4000th, ISO 800)

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