Catching up on bird photos

[centuryplant]

Song Sparrows love high perches out in the open, so last year's mullein stalk is perfect.

This Tree Swallow didn't seem to mind my presence at all. Its house was right beside the trail, one of a pair. Last year one of the park staff at Carver told pameladean and me that they always put two nesting boxes side by side because they want bluebirds, but single boxes are always taken by swallows instead. If you build two, swallows will move into one and refuse to let any other swallows settle nearby.

This is a first-year male Red-Winged Blackbird. I don't know what caught his attention in the second photo, but his pose shows off the brown and cream-colored feather margins on his back.

This gosling turned around to look at me as I was waiting for it and its parents to get into the water. "Why are you pointing a camera at our butts? What's wrong with you?"

A Chipping Sparrow sitting on a post at dusk. The post was out in the middle of a prairie restoration at William O'Brien State Park, and didn't have any obvious function; for all I know, it was put there for birds to perch on.