This morning walk was very productive and we found a pair of Rufous-winged Antshrikes. They approached very close and we all captured nice photos of this species. To me this was the prettiest of the antshrikes we saw in the Pantanal.

One of the last days in the Pantanal we had the most memorable experience with ant shrikes. On morning walk this morning yielded many interesting birds. This is a female Rufous-winged Antshrike.

Although I have been to Brazil on three different occasions, I had not seen any antshrikes. This recent trip we saw them several times and they were fun to watch and they posed for us on several occasions. My favorite of the antshrikes were saw was the Barred Antshrike.

To follow onto last week’s post of a monkey, I decided to post a different species. One of the places we stayed these capuchins hung out in the trees near the hotel.

One of the great aspects of international travel is that you get to see animals that you never see at home.

Our first morning of our birding trip we went to a park and saw lots of birds, but we also got to watch the marmosets in the park. They were lots of fun to watch.

I really enjoy watching these bold gregarious birds and they seemed to be the dominate bird at the feeders, unless a Green Jay flew in! I will admit that I had forgotten that this species ranged into south Texas, so I was kind of surprised to see it. I had seen this species in Big Bend and in Arizona and probably California.

I have mixed feelings about photographing bathing birds, even though I’ve seen others do a lot of it. Even when the photos turn out to be interesting, they still look strange to me. I try to get something a little different when I photograph a bathing bird, but most of them have the same look to me. I do like the apparent motion of the wing in this photo so I kept it and shared it with you.

I’m back to editing the photos I took while at Laguna Seca Ranch. I have alway thought of this bird as the pretty cardinal-like bird that I mispronounce the name. One of the more simple portraits that I captured while I was in Edinburgh.
Some refer to this bird as the Desert Cardinal.

I was fairly busy this year during the peak of migration and I missed an unusual rare bird in Galveston County. I did try one two occasions to see the MacGillivray’s Warbler as it would have been a life bird that I had missed on other occasions when I lived in the western US.
I took a trip into WestTexas this year and spent a couple of days at South Llano River State Park and I not only saw a MacGillivray’s Warbler, but a photo as well!

I enjoy visiting the Smith Oaks Sanctuary and early in the breeding season. The courtship behavior is fun to watch and the birds are really decked out in all of their finery. He was showing off to another snowy egret.
If you go to the rookery early in the morning you have the sun rising behind behind the birds, gives you a challenge in exposure, but if you get the exposure correct, you get a striking photo!