Flying Black-necked Stilts

by Judi Dressler

Title

Flying Black-necked Stilts

Artist

Judi Dressler

Medium

Photograph - Photography

Description

It was springtime, and birds everywhere were pairing up, and these two elegant, long-legged Black-necked Stilts were hanging out together. In this image they were flying to the edge of a large pond where the water level was down and were there was a muddy area at the edge where the birds could forage for aquatic invertebrates, small crustaceans, amphibians, and snails.

Everything about the Black-necked Stilt seems delicate and yet stately -- from its incredibly thin stilt-legs to its slim wings and its needle-like bill -- yet it manages to thrive on the sun-baked flats around shallow lakes, some of them in searing climates.​ These stilts move deliberately when foraging, walking slowly through wetlands in search of tiny aquatic prey. When disturbed, stilts are vociferous, to put it mildly, and their high, yapping calls carry for some distance.

Photo taken on May 6, 2021, at Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge in northern California.

-------------------------------------------

Descriptive keywords and tags for this image include stilts, black-necked stilts, shorebirds, flying, flight, pair, two, black and white, wetlands, spring, himantopus mexicanus, recurvirostridae, elegant, california, birds, long legged, pond, wildlife, wild, dressler, judi dressler

Uploaded

May 14th, 2021

Statistics

Viewed 351 Times  -  Last Visitor from Cambridge, MA on 04/24/2024 at 10:15 PM

Colors

Embed

Share

Sales Sheet

Tags