Being a bored person with a camera on a holiday Monday morning, I headed down to the fish hatchery to find birds to shoot. The birds love to hang out here for one reason or another and they are easy to find and photograph. Most of the birds are relatively tolerant of people as well, so I don’t really need a bird blind. While I have seen a lot of different species of birds here, on this morning I focused on two in particular.

First, the black vultures. They aren’t thought of as attractive birds, but they serve their purpose and I find them interesting. I can’t say for certain why they love the fish hatchery but there is generally no shortage of them there. It may be that there are often dead catfish left behind that they can pick over. Or maybe they like sitting around by water. At any rate, my understanding is that they take it easy during the morning waiting for the air to heat up so they can go up and glide waiting for some klutz with a car to hit an animal. The photo below shows a black vulture that was ready for its close-up. The birds were barely bothered by my presence and didn’t react unless I got within about 10 feet of them.

In the photo below you can see them hanging out all over a tractor at the fish hatchery. I really liked this scene and took some time shooting it from different perspectives and waiting on some sunlight. Not sure what that rig is on the back of the tractor. My guess is that they back it into a pond and spin it to aerate the water as these are stagnant ponds that are probably a bit oxygen poor. Or perhaps they use it to mix cookie dough, I don’t know.

You can also see them standing around with their wings spread out to manage their body temperature. Below is a photo of one of the vultures with its wings spread and one silhouetted in a tree. I can’t resist a good silhouette for some reason.

The other bird that I focused on was the Canada geese. There always seem to be plenty of these around here and they are one of the most common geese around these parts. I think the geese raise goslings here and so they stick around waiting for them to be mature enough to fly away. In the photos below you can see some adult geese looking after the goslings. I suppose the ponds at the fish hatchery make a safe place to raise some children. I spent a lot of time trying to get nice scenes of the goslings, but they aren’t very cooperative.

The Canada geese are also very tolerant of big goofy two legged animals carrying cameras around. They didn’t let me get too close, but they didn’t panic either. I don’t chase the birds around, I just pick a place and shoot them at 800mm which I can’t even really focus unless I am several meters away. I have been up the river at Inks Lake State Park, and these birds will sometimes follow you around wanting crackers or something so they aren’t shy. The photo below is not cropped as I was quite close to the geese (about 4 meters). I like the fact that he (or she) had grass hanging out its mouth; seemed casual.

Those are my scenes from a quiet holiday morning at the fish hatchery. As usual it was just me and the birds, and fish I suppose. I never regret getting up in the morning and going somewhere to shoot photos. Thanks for reading.