Sunday, October 24, 2010

Late Afternoon

Gotta be more active in publishing posts in order to keep up with the photos I took. These shots were all taken in and around the artificial river near my dorm several weeks ago. A few juvenile Grey-tailed Tattlers were still lingering around, though all of them have already gone by now. The White and Grey Wagtails were numerous. The White Wagtails were especially photogenic. Many of them showed yellowish wash on their faces indicating that they're juveniles.

Juvenile Grey-tailed Tattler
Note its pale fringes on upperwing coverts

Juvenile male White Wagtail (Motacilla alba lugens)

Non-breeding Grey Wagtails
Some more photos of the migrating starlings again. I finally found out that the flock came down to bath in the river before flying up to preen themselves on electrical wires nearby before flying out to the Beppu Tower, their actual roosting site. I didn't find any Red-billed Starling since that day, although I scanned through most of the main flocks. Photographing them at dusk was really difficult since the speed was really low and the photos also look really dark.

4 comments:

Stuart Price said...

Looks like you had really nice light there..........

the waders and Red Cheeked Starlings are long gone up here.......

Phil Slade said...

You spoil us with so many photographs A. I thought it was a trick of the light at first but your white wags are really very white on the coverts.

Chris said...

Beautiful post. I was wondering why your white wagtail was so different from ours until I saw that it was a subspecies... Congrats on these beautiful shots of the wagtails and the tattler.. They are really great!

Mark Young said...

Lovely Tattler images. I wouldn't mind seeing a juv turn up here.