{"id":14065,"date":"2025-03-09T17:03:17","date_gmt":"2025-03-09T21:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/?p=14065"},"modified":"2025-03-09T17:03:17","modified_gmt":"2025-03-09T21:03:17","slug":"sunday-shots-03-09-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/?p=14065","title":{"rendered":"Sunday Shots, 03\/09\/25"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last weekend was a tough one – very few birds and almost no photo ops. This weekend was a different story. The PINK-FOOTED GOOSE on Saturday was by far the highlight, but in addition to that, it was a birdy weekend and I took a lot of photos. Heat shimmer gave me fits for photos as well as scanning, but that can’t be helped. I was at Wickham Lake both mornings at sunrise; the lake is loaded with birds right now and made for some enjoyable birding. There are many Common Mergansers (hard to say, but probably 300-400?). Gulls were plentiful as well; it was probably the most gulls I’ve ever seen on that lake, with approximately 100+ Ring-billed Gulls and 20+ American Herring Gulls. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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~American Herring Gulls and Ring-billed Gulls at Wickham Lake, 03\/09\/25.~ <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I can’t even tell you how many geese I looked through in the past two days – many thousands for sure. I had 11 Snow Geese (8 were blue morphs!), and I also had one bird that I think is a very good candidate for a Cackling Goose; see photo at the bottom of this post. Two Sandhill Cranes were reported at the Liberty Loop on Saturday afternoon – I ended up seeing them on Sunday morning through dumb luck (they flew in and landed in front of a flock of geese I was sorting through). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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~Sandhill Crane coming in for a landing, Liberty Marsh 03\/09\/25.~<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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~I’m loving the fluffed up feathers in this shot. Sandhill Crane at Liberty Marsh, 03\/09\/25.~<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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~Blue morph Snow Goose in the black dirt, 03\/09\/25.~<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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~Ring-billed Gulls raising an early morning racket. Wickham Lake, 03\/09\/25.~<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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~Female Common Merganser at Wickham Lake, 03\/08\/25.~<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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~And a drake Common Merganser, Wickham Lake 03\/08\/25.~<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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~White-crowned Sparrow at the Liberty Loop, 03\/09\/25.~<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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~I’m calling the bird on the far left a Cackler. Black Dirt Region, 03\/09\/25.~<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last weekend was a tough one – very few birds and almost no photo ops. This weekend was a different story. The PINK-FOOTED GOOSE on Saturday was by far the highlight, but in addition to that, it was a birdy weekend and I took a lot of photos. Heat shimmer gave me fits for photos … Continue reading “Sunday Shots, 03\/09\/25”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-orangecounty","category-photos"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5i3kT-3ER","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14065"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14077,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14065\/revisions\/14077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}