The Howland
Picture Pages: Mountain Bluebird The Howland
Picture Pages: Mountain BluebirdPage by Royce
Last update: $Date: 2004/01/20 04:03:04 $ (UTC)
The Mountain Bluebird (Sialia currucoides) is, well, very blue! We get these bluebirds in southern Alberta during the summer, but they prefer open country (and obviously mountains or higher elevations) and so they haven't yet made our list in Calgary proper. We have more frequently seen Mountain Bluebirds while traveling in the U.S. mid- and southwest, particularly Colorado and New Mexico. Catching that particular flash of bright blue in the air or among the grass or brush always makes for a nice bit of excitement.
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While based in Denver for a few months, one of the first weekend trips we took (January 17, 2004) into the surrounding Colorado area was down to the southern Front Range city of Pueblo. (If you are ever in Pueblo and would like an interesting place to eat, try the Steel City Diner & Bakeshop. It's a small restaurant in the Union Avenue Historic District, at 121 W. "B" Street. Steel City Diner has a very creative and top-notch menu oriented towards organic foods, which we would call "fusion" but some references call "American". The staff was friendly, service excellent and the prices very reasonable. Highly recommended!) A bit to the west and south of the city is Lake Pueblo, a man-made reservoir fed by the Arkansas River, and the associated Lake Pueblo State Park. Our first visit to this location was brief but eventful for a winter's day birding. (Mind you, the conditions weren't very wintery, compared to what we're used to in January!) Among other things, we sighted perhaps a dozen Mountain Bluebirds, including this individual. The group of Mountain Bluebirds were very active in their typical way, flitting frequently between the surface of the ice (as we were near part of the reservoir shore), bare patches of ground and the tall, grassy vegetation. They perched on the same favorite twigs, often 3 - 6 in close proximity. Every so often one would pop up into the air and hover for a few moments with rapid wing beats. It was a bit like stumbling into a swarm of large, electric-blue bees. Seeing these delightful birds was an unexpected pleasure, and an excellent way to mark the first part of our weekend expedition. This photo was taken with a digiscoping setup. I did not notice the band on the Bluebird's right leg until processing the photo for this page.
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Here is another Mountain Bluebird at Lake Pueblo State Park. This shot was taken January 17, 2004, with a digiscoping setup.
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Here is another Mountain Bluebird at Lake Pueblo State Park. This shot was taken January 17, 2004, with a digiscoping setup.
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This is my favorite Mountain Bluebird photo taken January 17, 2004 at Lake Pueblo State Park. Again, a digiscoping setup was used. Light was moderate (fairly cloudy hence the slow shutter speed), but wind was extremely light and the range was quite close (probably about 6 meters). Plus the Bluebird was cooperative in posing for a nearly perfect shot.
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Among the many species of birds we saw in our all-too-brief visit to the Bosque del Apache national wildlife refuge November 16, 2002 was the Mountain Bluebird. (See our Bosque del Apache page.) This wasn't a bird we were planning to encounter in New Mexico. The bluebird in this shot was among a group of a half dozen or so sitting in a tree off to the side of the path. Every so often, one of them would fly out to the path to peck along the ground, then go back to the tree. A bit of a crowd of watchers developed, observing the bluebirds fly back and forth to their perch, or angling to get photos. I had resigned myself to not getting any good photos since the angle of the light was poor, the birds were very active and I didn't have enough lens to take a good long range shot as they perched on the tree. But I was able to catch this bluebird on the wing.
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Here is another Mountain Bluebird from the same group. This image is somewhat "off" partly because I was shooting at ISO 400, which I basically never do any more due to the grainy quality it imparts. I was trying to keep the shutter speed up, however, to freeze the action of these active bluebirds. The other quirky influence on this photo is that I was reacting to the sudden take-off of the bird straight towards me -- I just pointed and shot the camera. The resulting exposure is not great, but here it is.
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Unless stated otherwise, all photos and other content on these pages is copyright © 2002 - 2004 by Royce Howland.
Please don't steal anything for your own purposes, in particular if you have a plan for making fabulous stacks of cash in so doing. If you would like to use a photo or other content you find here, or just want to contact us about something, please send email to royce@3ge.com.
