• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

Republicans do not trust women.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Mobile Menu

  • 4 Directions VA 2025 Raffle
  • 2025 Activism
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • 2025 Activism
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • Targeted Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Photo Blogging / On The Road / On The Road – TheOtherHank – Water Birds

On The Road – TheOtherHank – Water Birds

by WaterGirl|  March 16, 20215:00 am| 18 Comments

This post is in: On The Road, Photo Blogging

FacebookTweetEmail

On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.

From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.

Submit Your Photos

TheOtherHank

Now that I’ve exhausted my presentable raptor pictures, here are a few more snaps of birds that one finds near water. I’ve also gotten more aware of the resolution of the image files when they get posted, so this batch is a bit more tightly cropped.

On The Road - TheOtherHank - Water Birds 7
Santa Barbara, CA

Here we see a brown pelican hoping to have a snack in the very near future.

On The Road - TheOtherHank - Water Birds 6
Mori Point, Pacifica, CA

A blue heron not looking for fish. There are a lot of them around Pacifica and I see them hunting gophers quite often so I suspect that this one looking for something mammalian.

Mori Point, for those of you who like old movies, is where Harold sends the Jaguar off the cliff into the ocean in Harold and Maude.

On The Road - TheOtherHank - Water Birds 5
Kauai, HI

Several years ago we went to Kauai, there’s a lighthouse on a point that all the tourists must go to. There are many seabirds flying around, this is one of them. I don’t have any idea what it is

On The Road - TheOtherHank - Water Birds 4
Kauai, HI

Another mystery seabird zooming around by the lighthouse

On The Road - TheOtherHank - Water Birds 3
Santa Barbara, CA

Some kind of wading bird. I tried to ID it using the internet and maybe it’s a long-billed curlew.

On The Road - TheOtherHank - Water Birds 2
Santa Barbara, CA

This is, I’m pretty sure, a great egret. According to the internet: cattle egrets have light colored legs and yellow bills; snowy egrets have black legs and bills; great egrets have black legs and yellow bills. Based on those options, I’m going with great egret.

On The Road - TheOtherHank - Water Birds 1
South of Half Moon Bay, CA

A herd of brown pelicans cruising over some dunes by the beach somewhere between Half Moon Bay and Pescadero

On The Road - TheOtherHank - Water Birds
Rogue River, OR

Another blue heron, this one in Oregon and doing proper heron behavior: looking for a fish to eat.

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « Wokking It Up
Next Post: COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Monday/Tuesday, March 15-16 »

Reader Interactions

18Comments

  1. 1.

    Betty Cracker

    March 16, 2021 at 6:03 am

    Nice! Ever tried the Merlin Bird ID app? Their photo ID thing might be able to help you identify the mystery birds. I’ve found it extremely handy, though not 100% reliable every time.

  2. 2.

    Rob

    March 16, 2021 at 6:48 am

    Nice indeed! I like the blue heron photo a lot. The two Hawaiian seabirds are boobies of some sort. The Santa Barbara wading bird is a Whimbrel, a type of curlew that has head stripes.

  3. 3.

    Laura Too

    March 16, 2021 at 7:03 am

    These are awesome! I love the blue heron looking for gophers. I didn’t know they did that. Thanks!

  4. 4.

    Albatrossity

    March 16, 2021 at 8:11 am

    Cool! No idea about the seabirds; they are too dark to get much information from. When shooting birds against a bright sky it is best to overexpose the shot by 0.7 to 1.0 f/stops. Yo get a lot more detail on the birds if you do that.

    The shorebird is a Whimbrel. Long-billed Curlews would have even longer bills than that!

  5. 5.

    TheOtherHank

    March 16, 2021 at 8:39 am

    Thanks for the whimbrel and boobie IDs. I have messed around with Merlin, but I did not know you can show it a picture. I’ll have to give that a try.

  6. 6.

    cope

    March 16, 2021 at 9:08 am

    These are fun pictures.  As for the landlubber heron, here in The Mildew State, we get lots of birds that would normally be found at water’s edge foraging in our yards and along the roads.  Not usually herons but ibises and egrets will visit our hedges and yard, probably taking advantage of the countless anoles we have in these parts.

    On a side note, as an occasional submitter of pictures to BJ, can you clarify your comment about resolution issues when posting here?  Are you saying you crop the picture area down so as to be able to up the pixel count for sharper pics?  Just curious.

    Thank you for posting these calming shots.

  7. 7.

    Barbara

    March 16, 2021 at 9:30 am

    These are lovely. Thanks.

  8. 8.

    mvr

    March 16, 2021 at 9:39 am

    Thank you!

  9. 9.

    Benw

    March 16, 2021 at 9:59 am

    The great egret is great! Thanks for sharing

  10. 10.

    frosty

    March 16, 2021 at 10:17 am

    @Albatrossity: My approach to underexposed shots has been to lighten the image in the computer. I haven’t figured out spot metering/exposure  yet and so far I’m too slow for manual.

  11. 11.

    frosty

    March 16, 2021 at 10:31 am

    @Betty Cracker: For me, Merlin is like having an expert looking over my shoulder. Occasionally it’s laughably wrong, though, like when its only suggestion for a Muscovy Duck was Pileated Woodpecker. Wha???

  12. 12.

    TheOtherHank

    March 16, 2021 at 10:38 am

    @cope:  With respect to cropping, when I’m looking at a picture that takes up most of my 27″ monitor, if the thing of interest is, say a quarter of the picture and the rest is setting the scene, it looks pretty good. With On The Road, the picture you see embedded in the post is what you get. Clicking on it doesn’t show you a larger version of the picture. So cropping the picture down to the focus of the picture prevents a lot of squinting and saying “What is that little patch of pixels supposed to be?” As an example, several of my raptor pictures should have been cropped to make the bird itself more of the image

  13. 13.

    CaseyL

    March 16, 2021 at 12:12 pm

    I had no idea blue herons ate mammals.  Sneaky little bastards!

    Imagine you’re a chipmunk, going about your business looking for nuts, begging from hikers, the usual.

    You see a bird nearby, but it’s just a heron – eh, fisheater, not someone you need to worry about like a hawk or eagle —

    And the joke’s on you when the sneaky bastard snaps you up like an hors d’oeuvres at a film premiere.

  14. 14.

    cope

    March 16, 2021 at 12:15 pm

    @TheOtherHank: Thanks.

  15. 15.

    J R in WV

    March 16, 2021 at 3:38 pm

    This is always great stuff, both the photos and the conversation about the photos. Have been all over the world right here on Balloon-Juice, thanks to Alain and Watergurl and all the phtographers sending in their stuff.

    Thanks T’ O’ Hank.

  16. 16.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    March 16, 2021 at 4:38 pm

    I always think of the Great Egret as a Great White Heron. I can’t imagine why it isn’t called that! Obviously, I’m not clear on the difference between egrets and herons :-). Snowy Egrets are usually smaller than the Great Egrets and have what the bird books call “golden slippers” i.e. yellow feet. So if the bird has yellow feet, it’s a Snowy. Thanks for the pictures

    ETA: an hour since the last post. Guess it’s dead, sigh.

  17. 17.

    frosty

    March 16, 2021 at 6:20 pm

    @A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): But there IS a Great White Heron in South Florida. White morph of a Great Blue.

    See, you didn’t kill the thread!

  18. 18.

    TheOtherHank

    March 16, 2021 at 6:55 pm

    @CaseyL: I saw a Great Blue Heron catch a gopher while I was waiting for my kids to finish swim practice. The gopher did not appreciate it at all. At least when one gets grabbed by a hawk, there’s time to die before one gets ingested. The heron’s gopher was still wriggling as it got swallowed.

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

On The Road - BarcaChicago  - Off the Gunflint Trail/Boundary Waters 7
Image by BarcaChicago (7/17/25)
Donate

Recent Comments

  • Sister Inspired Revolver of Freedom on War for Ukraine Day 1,239: A Brief Thursday Night Update (Jul 17, 2025 @ 11:57pm)
  • Omnes Omnibus on Thursday Night Open Thread (Jul 17, 2025 @ 11:53pm)
  • Harrison Wesley on Thursday Night Open Thread (Jul 17, 2025 @ 11:41pm)
  • Eolirin on Thursday Night Open Thread (Jul 17, 2025 @ 11:37pm)
  • Gloria DryGarden on Thursday Night Open Thread (Jul 17, 2025 @ 11:37pm)

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
No Kings Protests June 14 2025

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)
Fix Nyms with Apostrophes

Social Media

Balloon Juice
WaterGirl
TaMara
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
DougJ NYT Pitchbot
mistermix

Keeping Track

Legal Challenges (Lawfare)
Republicans Fleeing Town Halls (TPM)
21 Letters (to Borrow or Steal)
Search Donations from a Brand

Donate

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2025 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!