When you've been working on the nest to get it ready for the nesting season, but it's 10 degrees, and the dang snow keeps piling up, you just have to shake it off and do the chilly willies. Swipe to see the animated sequence . . .

As the largest native waterfowl in North America, and with a wingspan of up to 7 to 8 feet, these elegant swans need a lot of room to take off . . . on water that is: Trumpeters cannot take off on land, only on water. . . .

Watching short-eared owls on the hunt is one of life's little joys along the journey . . .

Instead of a golden hour, it was more like a few golden minutes. Tom Skilling said the clouds might break toward the end of the day, but they held tight until the very end when the sun finally emerged from the main cloud layer only to sink into another layer of clouds before it disappeared into the horizon . . .

Back in September the bumblebees had become quite active around the flowers, and I was watching this one in particular as it collected some pollen from this finch-plucked flower, and then it crawled out onto these two petals and it stopped moving . . . for about 8 to 10 minutes. Then it started its wing machine . . .

Here's something you don't see every day, a Leucistic Sandhill Crane. This fall while watching the sandhills come in waves from the northwest to circle and land in the marsh, one really stood out as the sun highlighted its white wings . . .

A female Whooping Crane (aka #14-15) takes off in the early morning after roosting overnight with her migrating companions, a flock of sandhill cranes. With the sun below the horizon and the skies beginning to brighten with yellows and oranges, different groups of cranes would begin to chatter and then take off . . .

This Great Blue Heron was pretty proud of his catch a couple of months ago as it was snagged in the middle of the pond and then walked all of the way back to the shoreline where it gave it a couple of thumps with its bill before enjoying the tasty treat.

Can you find a whooping crane hanging out with some Sandhills in this shallow pond? There are now 826 whooping cranes in North America as of Feb 2020, up from a low of 16 birds in 1941 (US Fish and Wildlife) . . .

Found some trumpeter swans taking a break from their migration recently, and caught one showing off its wingspan. I'm always struck by just how white and beautiful their feathers are, what a treasure they are.