Pintails overwinter here - by the hundreds, perhaps the thousands. The line the shores of Drayton Harbor. The roads are narrow in this area, and the traffic speeds by so it is hard to find a place to pull over to get good pictures of the amazing number of Pintails. Luckily we found a good grassy area on a side road.
The Pintail Ducks line the shores - across the bay is Blaine, WA, on the border with Canada. On the left in Blaine you see a small white hoop - that is Peace Arch Park - at the border crossing. The arch is several stories high.
The birds are everywhere
I'm fascinated by the feather patterns. The males have long skinny feathers that form the "pin" tail.
Some of the ducks will leave the napping groups and take a swim
The pattern of the female feathers is as interesting as that of the males.
And notice the blue beak
Collages are made with picmonkey.com and collage.com - a new one to me - it has lots of interesting shapes (like the hot air balloon) and wonderful backgrounds to use in the collages. Both programs are free.
All photos are taken with Nikon CoolPix P600
10 comments:
Lovely pictures, and once again I learn something new about nature! Interesting how they pick out a nice, somewhat secluded place for themselves and then all go there together. Fun to see how they'll just randomly decide, "Well, off for a quick swim now, honey!" They actually behave better than people do. People would be arguing over who gets the best spot closest to the water!
The male is a smart looking duck with the blue bill and long tail, both do have nice feather markings.
I'm going to check out the new collage software, thanks for telling readers what you use JoAnn.
Thanks for linking to Mosaic Monday.
I don't think I've seen many pintails but I can't imagine we don't have some hanging around this area. Those females look like they're wearing herringbone!
Wow- such great photos of these beautiful creatures. I've never seen one pintail let alone hundreds! How fortunate for us that you could find good spot to photograph them. Love the males blue beak and "fancy" tail! Thanks for telling us about collage.com, I'll be checking it out.
Pintails winter here as well (and since some places people feed them, they sometimes hang around longer and create interesting hybrid ducks) I am always happy when I take scouts birding and they can identify at least ten varieties without my help...other than to provide a printout with arrows pointing to the identifying clues.
I love your images and edits, very cool. The Pintails are gorgeous ducks! Great sighting and photos.. Have a happy new week!
Such pretty ducks. Love the blue bill on the male. You've taken some great shots and done lots of fun editing.
Gosh, I don't think that I have ever seen so many ducks all in one place. An amazing sight. xx
These are great ducks that we don't see and I love the last collage.
Those are so adorable and I can't get over how many they are. So amazing to see. And your collages are beautiful, very artistic :-)
Post a Comment