Happy New Year. Here are some of my favorite images take over 2023. I really like the image below of an American Kestrel looking back at me. He was perched on a light post with under a mostly sunny sky so I could us a shutter speed of 1/1000s, an f/9.0, and ISO400. Some birds will let you get close and others will not like Warblers. I was able to get within 10m and just sat there looking at the lake and me.

The Pinyon Jay is charismatic member of the Corvid family and can be found throughout the Reno/Carson City area in the right habitat. I found the Jay below at Topaz Lake in a transitional habitat of Pinyon/Juniper and Sagebrush. They were right next to the road and let me get very close.

Lincoln's Sparrows are secretive and have a wren like song. They can be found in wet mountainous meadows from May through July in the West and into Canada through Alaska. They move to lower elevations in the Winter and I found this one along the Truckee River at McCarran Ranch, which is a few miles east of the Reno/Sparks area.

Since moving to the Reno, NV area in 2016, I’ve been searching for the Black-backed Woodpecker. I first saw one in the northern part of the Idaho panhandle but no photos. I have heard then 2-3 times in the eastern Sierras west of Reno and Carson City but no photos.

I planned a trip through the Smoke Creek Desert in the hopes of photographing a Yellow-breasted Chat. The Yellow-breasted Chat has always been a mystery to taxonomists: it looks similar to Warblers but is larger, has a more varied songs and calls, and has different behavior and anatomy compared to warblers. For decades the Chat was place in the warbler family, but in the late 2010s this Chat was given its own family (Icteriidae), noting the differences from a Warbler.

There are about 15 different Dark-eyed Junco subspecies in North America and I have had 5 subspecies in my yard, which is located SW of Reno NV. The most common Junco, in my area, are the Oregon subspecies and they are more common in the winter but being altitudinal migrants here you can find them breeding above 6000ft.

Looking back over the years of photographing birds, I have noticed a continuous improvement in my image composition and quality. If I had to pick my favorite image for 2022 it would be an encounter with a Pacific Wren. I have seen them in the Chimney Beach area, which is about 6 mi south of Incline Village on the north shore of Lake Tahoe in the eastern Sierra Nevada Range of Washoe County NV. It would be easier to look that up.

The last time I talked about wrens was in 2015 so what about a revisit. What’s nice about Wrens is they are bold, chatty, will get in your face when you are in their territory, and they will sit still. The Pacific Wren is very common in my old home of Santa Cruz, CA but on the east side of Sierras you need to know where to find them.

I saw my first Hutton’s Vireo on Aug 31 2008 near my home in the Santa Cruz Mountains, which was about 5 miles north of Boulder Creek, California. The Hutton’s Vireo is a common resident along the Pacific Coast and western Sierras so I had seen many each spring; however, it is a rare bird for Washoe County in northwest Nevada.

One of my favorite birds, besides the one in my lens view, is the Sandhill Crane. I saw my first in eastern Florida where I watched a pair of immature with their mom. This pair I first saw out of the corner of my eye when rounding the south end of Washoe Lake.