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.
It’s Albatrossity Monday!
Then we have the last of frosty’s banks, followed by 2 days of hiking with TKH!
Albatrossity
I started out my second full day On The Road with a short sunrise swing through the Monte Vista National Wildlife refuge, then headed west to Cortez CO before finally bearing south to Gallup. It was a fine late summer morning in the San Luis Valley, cool and calm and pretty birdy

A nearly full moon setting and a flyby cadre of Canada Geese (Branta canadensis), which are found across the country all year long, no longer confined to Canada for the breeding season. Click here for larger image.

Waterfowl were not abundant in the areas of the refuge that are open to the public, but the calm morning meant that those I could find were probably basking in their own reflections. This adult Pied-billed Grebe (Podilymbus podiceps) was one of many grebes seen, but most of those were youngsters like the one featured here last week. They seem to have had a good productive year there. Click here for larger image.

Another western US waterfowl species that I only see rarely in my patch of Flyover Country is the Cinnamon Teal (Spatula cyanoptera). Sadly, it is the time of year when the usually stunning males are in “eclipse” plumage, allowing them to blend in and hide out until it is time to court and strut again. The red eye tells you that it is a male, but otherwise the plumage is basically female. Cross-dressing ducks did not get mentioned in the Harris/Trump debate, but you can be assured that Jagoff Divan Vance is going to mention it in the VP debate. Click here for larger image.

Lots of North American birds molt at this time of year, growing some sturdy new feathers in preparation for the journey south. Black-crowned Night Herons (Nycticorax nycticorax) were abundant in the tall cattail marshes, and most of them were either youngsters or adults, but this one was a second-summer bird, an in-betweener, in obvious molt. It has lots of older pale brown feathers, and quite a few new dark feathers on the wings, and is starting to grow some darker feathers on the crown as well. Click here for larger image.

Mosquitoes are one of the required critters in any marshland, and this one was no exception Luckily it also had flocks of swallows, swooping and snatching lots of mosquitoes. This is a young Violet-green Swallow (Tachycineta thalassina), another western species that I look for every time I venture this way. Click here for larger image.

Brewer’s Sparrow (Spizella breweri) is an abundant summertime bird in the sagebrush habitat sections of this refuge. If sparrows are not your thing, I apologize in advance for the next images, but we’re gonna learn something about sparrows regardless. This is an adult bird, with a pale eye-ring, long notched tail, dainty dusky-tipped bill, and clear unstreaked breast. Click here for larger image.

This is a recently-hatched/fledged Brewer’s Sparrow. Same pale eye-ring, same dainty bill, but overall scruffier and with “breast and flanks narrowly streaked with black triangular marks” (Rising and Beadle, The Sparrows of the United States and Canada, 1996). Interestingly, most sparrow species in which the adults have unstreaked underparts will have juveniles that are streaky underneath, and vice versa. A useful thing to know when trying to ID a tricky juvenile sparrow. Click here for larger image.

And, just for good measure, a shot with an adult and a juvenile in the same frame. Click here for larger image.

Another denizen of the sagebrush habitat is the Sage Thrasher (Oreoscoptes montanus), a small and relatively short-billed member of the thrasher clan. It is just as musical and loquacious as the other more familiar members of that clan. Click here for larger image.

After leaving the refuge, I headed west over Wolf Creek Pass across the San Juan Mountains, and into some summer monsoon rainstorms on the western slope. I stopped for lunch near the road to Mesa Verde, and waited out a thundershower while watching this scruffy Juniper Titmouse (Baeolophus ridgwayi). It obligingly posed in a juniper! Click here for larger image.
eclare
That Grebe is so cute! Although it took me a while to figure out the photo, the water is a perfect reflection.
Don
Since Peter King retired from sports journalism, these fantastic photos are all I’ve got on Monday morning. Love the look of the swallow. Giving The Eye. Thanks, man.
JeanneT
Nice set of birds to start the morning with. Stealing the geese for my week’s desktop picture, if I may?
Albatrossity
@JeanneT: The gees will make a nice desktop background; the image is much less noisy than the real thing! Certainly, feel free to snag the image and employ it that way.
Winter Wren
Great composition with the geese and moon.
SteveinPHX
Thank you for the photos. Going to have to look for a copy of that book on sparrows.
Albatrossity
@SteveinPHX: It’s a very helpful book, since sparrows can be vexing ID problems for many birders. Jim Rising (the author, Beadle was the artist for the figures in the book) was a wonderful fellow; I actually had the pleasure of birding with him a couple of times. I wish I had thought to get him to sign the book when I had a chance…
Albatrossity
@SteveinPHX: It’s a very useful book, since sparrows can be vexing ID problems for lots of birders. Jim Rising, the author (Beadle was the artist for the plates and figures in the book) was a wonderful fellow. I had the pleasure of birding with him a couple of times. I wish I had thought of getting him to sign my copy of the book when I had a chance…
Trivia Man
Ona related note, i would be very interested in a series of entries here focusing more on the process and the journey and less on the nice content. We have seen OTR journeys to all corners of the earth and we have gotten perks here and there into the planning that goes in.
If i we’re writing the submission form (neuro divergence alert!) id include a few lines for footnotes.
How far in advance did you have to reserve?
did you stay with family/ friends, camp, hotel , air bnb?
Ballpark cost – hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands?
How physically demanding/ dangerous? Only for stout hearted? Handicap access?
I recognize to most people it’s probably TMI, and some want to keep it private. And for most it is sure to be an irrelevant distraction. So maybe on a day with nothing in the queue we can discuss logistics.
Trivia Man
@Albatrossity: I once lived near Horicon marsh, some days the goose traffic was mind boggling. A restaurant had ild photos when the flocks would literally fill the sky.
Albatrossity
Hmmm. I posted a link to this post on my Facebook page, as I do every week. It was removed because it “violated community standards”.
WTF?
twbrandt
@Albatrossity: A friend of mine had his FB account suspended for “violation of community standards”, but all he does on it is play word games with his 80+ year old father.
I’m guessing they are using some kind of automated, possibly AI-driven, process to flag things, and it’s not working very well.
pieceofpeace
Great pic of the geese! The reflection photos are lovely creativity. Thanks!
J.
Your photos always make Monday mornings a bit better. Especially love the sparrows and the titmouse. Very cute. :-)
Albatrossity
@twbrandt: The term “AI” is giving it too much credit. I’m going with AS (Artificial Stupidity).
I requested that the decision to remove the post be reviewed, of course, so we’ll see how that turns out. Meanwhile lots of posts that actually do violate community standards appear there every day…
twbrandt
@Albatrossity:
I’m stealing that :)
mvr
I did learn something about sparrows. And sparrow id does generally give me trouble.
Thanks!
KatKapCC
These are really wonderful!
Madeleine
@eclare: Thanks for pointing out the reflection. I could not figure out hoe to interpret the grebe photo (limited vision). The titmouse looks, to me, like it has a tweedy mask around its eye—curious.
stinger
I love Mondays!
KRK
Wonderful photos. I love the geese with the moon. The violet-green sparrow seems to be saying “don’t photograph me with my feathers mussed like this”.
way2blue
Albatrossity. Your first photo—Wow! Love the two marsh ones too—with the wrinkled green water.
[Off topic, a friend said we’re not supposed to hang sugar water for hummingbirds this time of year as they should be migrating. Do you know if that’s true (for northern California in my case)?]
Albatrossity
@way2blue: depending on where you are in NoCal, you could have hummingbirds (Anna’s) year-round. And hummingbirds migrate on they own internal calendar, so it is not a problem to leave feeders up for a while, just in case there are migrants from the north passing through your patch
Trivia Man
@Albatrossity: Juniper Titmouse?
way2blue
@Albatrossity: Thanks. [Just south of San Francisco, backed up against the Santa Cruz Mtns] Shimmering green body—I’ll check if they’re Anna’s… The little guys help themselves to my flowers too.
Yutsano
I’ve tried to comment twice, but FYWP keeps erasing it.
I’ll just say this: this epitaph for Vance needs moar love.
Oh and love all the pics but that shot with the gibbous moon and the Canadian invaders is almost Pulitzer worthy.
StringOnAStick
That fierce swallow is divine!
Albatrossity
@way2blue: Yeah, you should have Anna’s year round. And maybe the occasional over-wintering Black-chinned as well.