Oct. 31, 2010 - Door County, WI

Most of Door County, Wisconsin, is a peninsula jutting out into Lake Michigan. We were there about a week ago and stayed in a house on the shore of Green Bay (the body of water, not the city). One evening, as the sun was setting, a flock of Canada Geese flew by against the orange sky.

GeeseCanadaflightDoorCounty20101013

The Bay Shore Blufflands Preserve was right across the street and I spent several mornings there taking photos of birds.
Back home in Minnesota there have been reports of large flocks of American Robins migrating. I also found lots of them at the Preserve. They were attracted to any trees that still had fruit on them.

RobinAmericanBayShoreBlufflandsPreserveDoorCty20101016

I keep thinking I have enough photos of Black-capped Chickadees but this one landed on a nearby mullein stalk, gave me a great pose, and I couldn’t resist.

ChickadeeBlackcappedBayShoreBlufflandsPreserveDoorCty20101016

The house where we stayed faced west so we were treated to several very nice sunsets. Here I managed to capture the sun just as it was dipping below the horizon.

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This was on the very next night when we had more clouds to capture the color of the setting sun.

SunsetComeInnDoorCounty20101019

We visited several of the Wisconsin State Parks in the area. At Potawatomi State Park, I was able to get several nice photos of this male Northern Cardinal.

CardinalNorthernmalePotawatomiDoorCty20101018

Also at Potawatomi State Park, I was fortunate to get a nice frontal view of a female Pileated Woodpecker perched on a branch. Usually these birds are clinging to the side of a tree trunk and I can only get a side view. Notice the long tail feathers. These are very stiff and help the Pileated brace itself against the side of a tree when it is feeding or excavating a nest hole.

WoodpeckerPileatedfemalePotawatomiDoorCty20101018