Fountain Creek Regional Park

Last Sunday I headed down to the Fountain Creek Regional Park. FCRP is a short distance south of Colorado Springs near the town of Fountain. It contains a series of small to medium size ponds and a river (Fountain Creek). FCRP attracts a lot of ducks in the winter and is know to attract warblers during migration. Due to its close proximity I have been many times. So far I have only seen Yellow-rumped, Yellow and Orange-crowned warblers, but this is Colorado so that is about all I have seen anywhere. Maybe I just can't see warblers. I have been trying out the Bogen 3421 gimbal tripod head. I was very impressed how easy it was to lock-on to small birds flying around in the canopy. I'll post another entry about the Bogen 3421 in a few days.



Here is a Audobon's Yellow-rumped Warbler. The trick is getting them to pose at eye level with a clean background.



And a female. This photo would have been improved with the use of some fill flash. This is somthing that I hope to explore this year.



A Northern Rough-winged Swallow. The Sibley book says that they are uncommon. Fountain Creek Regional Park is a good place to see these swallows.



There were still a few ducks around including this Hooded Merganser. It is difficult to photograph birds that have bright white and black markings on a sunny day. This duck allowed me to get closer than any other Hooded Merganser that I have encountered. Unfortunately most of the photos that I took had loss of detail in the whites and the blacks. This is the best photo and it also suffers from exposure problems.