by Judy Lehmberg, BioPics Photography, www.vernelehmberg.com (25% off sale of all photos for a limited time if you use the code “4000likes” without the quotation marks)
We spent several days this last week fishing 2 different spring creeks in Paradise Valley north of Yellowstone. We have been fishing these spring creeks for over 35 years and have known 3 generations of each family. One of the things we really like about the first creek we fished is that you can see where the spring comes out of the ground.
It is on a working cattle ranch but the owners keep the cows out of the creek. That is great for the fish and the other animals that live there. We always see Eastern Kingbirds there but this time we got lucky and saw their newly fledged babies too.
Eastern Kingbirds are not very well named I guess because they live all the way from the east coast to well into Oregon and Washington. They are flycatchers so they spend a lot of time perched out in the open looking for insects. When they spot one they swoop down on it quickly. They have a very good catch rate. They also eat berries.
At this spring creek the kingbirds usually eat a lot of aquatic insects, especially mayflies. But the day we were there the mayfly hatch wasn’t very good and we watched the kingbirds catching mostly grasshoppers, katydids and butterflies.
Judy, the images of the birds are stunning!
Thank you Deby! I got lucky, the light was good and the birds are used to people. It was a real joy to watch them. It was really interesting to see which baby the parent decided to feed. Once a parent came in and stuck a katydid in the middle babies mouth, then decided it was too big and pulled it back out and flew away. I filmed it but couldn’t figure out an effective way to show it here.
Judy the variety of photos and clarity are fabulous. The last one photo with the little one eating the bug is amazing. What type of bird, with wings spread, was behind the two? Thank You again, Barbara
Thank you Barbara. You are observant! The bird with its wings spread is one of the parents. Since that one baby has a grasshopper in its mouth I would think the parent was flying away, but it kind of looks like it is flying towards the babies.