South Jersey Visit (part 1)

By the time we settled into our motel, it was late afternoon. I checked the map, selected a small pond a couple of miles up the road, and drove over there. A path wound around one side of the pond so I followed it to get close enough to this solitary swan to get this picture:



While watching the swan, wondering if anything else interesting might happen, a turkey vulture passed over. It's not often that a sky shot of a turkey vulture captures the redness of its head.



Making my way back to the car, I was presented with this pose by a catbird. It stayed there for quite a few seconds allowing me to get a number of quite beautiful, but similar, shots:





It was the next morning before I got another picture worth publishing. Denise and Pam were attending to David so I took a stroll around the motel. This female house sparrow posed for me on the back fence:



Then it hopped along the fence a short way and presented its other side, this time with the sky as background:



I walked down the street and there in the street was a lump of discarded bread that was attracting the attention of a small group of sparrows.



But having just taken those lovely shots of the sparrow in the motel, I decided to walk on by, but then my attention was drawn to the arrival of a blue jay who also had its eye on the lump of bread.



Indeed, it hopped down to the road and started in on the bread. The sparrows scattered. But now, I was pointing the camera almost directly into the sun.



So I walked back to the other side of the bread and waited. The blue jay came back, this time to a tree:



But the bird foiled me by dropping down to the road, picking up the piece of bread and flying off with it.