faerye , I’ve been visiting my family in Central OR so much, I hadn’t been to my favorite marsh near home in MONTHS! So I stopped by briefly today to see what’s going on.
Mallard duckling broods of at least 3 different ages! Killdeer taking a bath. A female red-winged blackbird so mad at a great egret near her (presumed) nest that she rode it around in between divebombings! Great blue herons flying from bank to bank in inscrutable chords. Swallows stuffing their tiny faces!
A killdeer sitting in water it has agitated in spreading rings, feathers all fluffed up. Its usually sleek head is riffled so its very large orange-eyelinered eye looks more proportional. A drop of water is just visible on its downturned black bill. All the latte-colored feathers of its head and back are bristling with texture, and its wings are held slightly askew, showing hints of the light pumpkin shade hidden in its tailfeathers. It looks sort of dyspeptic, but they always do to anthropomorphizers, because of the exaggerated cartoon sad-brows their facial stripes somehow create.
A barn swallow perched among dead licheny branches, seen past several of them that cross in foreground. Its little beak is seen in profile, wide open to make noises much larger than the bird itself. The contrast between the deep blue feathers on the back of its head and body and the sweet-potato shades of its face and paler belly just makes the bird seem louder!