My Ten Favorite Celery Bog Photos From March

It is interesting how things work. I have less time to spend at the Celery Bog because of how my day is structured. When I can get out there I have a much more focused approach to what I want to see because of that. I did have a couple of days where I could just come out and let things come to me. Those days led to a few of the photos on here. I also made sure that I visited the birds that are more rare to the bog. Ruby the screech owl and the great horned owl garnered a lot of attention from me last month. April is an interesting month at the bog. The migratory birds have already started showing up, and they will keep coming in greater numbers as the month goes on. My walks will be much more random with that in mind. It seems like the migrant bird photos come much easier when you just let them find you. Here are my ten favorite images from last month.

10. Rare birds are fun to capture at the Celery Bog. The top photo could have been a rare four winged goose or it is two geese flying very close together. I will let you decide. The second photo above is of a mallard/domestic mixed duck. This was my only time seeing this bird so I was glad that it was in a place where I could make a photo of it.

9. The horned grebe is a bird that I don’t see very often either. In fact I made this photo a year to the date from the last photo of one that I had made. The year before though I just saw it popping up around me. I made some close in water photos, but nothing in flight. This bird flew right at us before banking and giving us a great photo.

8. This muskrat had been getting chased for about a half and hour before decided to just sit next to me and eat. I guessed that it was using my presence to keep the other muskrat away. This muskrat was so close in fact that I had to try and scoot down the log away from the muskrat to gain some distance to make a photo. It was a cool and unexpected encounter.

7. At some point soon I will start spending time with the herons watching them fish again. This heron came right in front of me and dove into the water to grab this koi. I loved the background of geese watching the action.

6. Most of the month of March saw a lot of ring-necked geese at the bog. This might be my favorite photo of them because of the color of the water and the background. Everything just seemed to work here.

5. This photo makes the countdown because of how rare of a scene this is for me. Usually when I see a brown creeper it is in bad light. In fact when I saw this one it was hanging out in the shade. I just sat still and hoped that it would find this stump of a freshly fallen tree. It came right where I wanted it to come for once and I was very pleased.

4. This pie-billed grebe had already eaten quite a bit when it grabbed this fish. I made photos both times earlier when the bird was closer, but the light was terrible. Here the sun came out and made the water look much more blue and every pop just a little more.

3. This is a time when I tried to predict where the birds would go. I saw a few bluebirds on the trail in a bad photo location. I moved down the trail a bit to a spot where I hoped that they would come. It was in the light with nothing in the immediate background so it would just melt away. This bluebird came to the perch that I hoped for and made the day for me. This does not always work out, but it makes it that much sweeter when it does.

2. This probably would be at number one, but I am hoping to make a better photo in April. This is the first great horned owl that I have ever seen. In that nest are the second and third great horned owls that I have ever seen. I have tighter photos of this owl, but I really liked this pulled back version for some reason. The fun will really begin when the little ones start to stray a bit from the nest.

1. This photo comes in at number one because of how long it took to make. In reality it took a couple of years to come together. I saw a photo from this hole that I really liked. By the time that I had found the hole the owl was no longer there. Flash forward a couple of years and the owl was back, but I never really made a photo of it that I liked. One night I decided to stay until the owl opened its eyes for me. I spent a ton of time with the owl this Saturday night with great light. The owl just slept or looked the other way. About twenty minutes after the sun went down some people were behind me talking just down the trail. One of them had a dog and the owl was very interested in that dog. That was the moment that I needed to finally make a photo of Ruby that I liked. At this point I was trying my best to stay still at 1/15th of a second, but somehow it worked. For all of the reasons above this will probably be my favorite photo of Ruby for quite some time.

There are my ten favorite photos from last month at the bog. As we speak a little color is returning to the bog both in plants and wildlife. April should be a fun month out there and I hope that I can bring a little bit of that fun to you.