Out of Yard Excursion

I've been somewhat remiss about posting to the blog for the past couple of weeks or so, mainly due to the lack of interesting yard birds and the weather that hasn't exactly encouraged photography. 

On Monday I made a little excursion to Washington Park to try to photograph some birds in a bush displaying beautiful fall colors.  When I arrived I found the birds in the bush, but it was a traveling band of Golden-crowned kinglets and they were on the move out of the area.  I thought about trying to follow them but I the reason I had come was for the backdrop (which they had left) and the weather was deteriorating and making photography much less appealing due to the lack of light.  I stayed around for awhile photographing instead a chipmunk, single female Harlequin duck and Marbled murrelets off of Green Point.  It was somewhat disappointing. 

On the way home I decided to swing by the Skyline Marina area and discovered at least two Killdeer in one of the parking lots.  I took a good many photos, two of which I've included here. 

One of the Killdeer decided to take a bath in one of the pools of water in the parking lot.  I realized that I had seen and photographed a lot of Killdeer around puddles but I had never seen one taking a bath.  Unfortunately this one decided to take a bath immediately adjacent to a discarded plastic bottle which I didn't want in the photo.  It eventually moved over a little and I was able to get some photos, but I think the best were to be had in its original position and posture.  As I watched the Killdeer bathe I was struck by how active the back part of the bird could be while keeping the head and neck area almost perfectly still.  I took these photos at about 1/200th of a second and the back and wings of the Killdeer are blurred but the head is in focus.