American avocets are elegant black-and white shorebirds with oddly upturned long bills, which they use to sweep or 'skim' shallow water for small invertebrates.   They frequently rest in small flocks; the winter-plumage birds in the photo above at right were sitting quietly in a salt pond (colored pink by mud, bacteria, and diffuse light) at Bolsa Chica wetlands (near Newport Beach, California).   I especially like this image because I had to take it through a rusty chain-link fence.   Pressing the lenshood against the wire completely blurred the fence out and yielded a sharp image of the birds.   The pictures of the winter avocet at upper left, feeding in the pastel light of dawn, and the group of three below at left, were taken near Palo Alto, California.
        In summer, the basic black and white plumage is spiffed up with a rusty-read head and neck (below).   These birds were at the San Jacinto Wildlife Area near Riverside, California.   Another page shows images of avocets in flight (also at the SJWA).

Finally, near the bottom left of the page are two views of a resting flock of summer-plumaged avocets in upper Newport Back Bay, in coastal Orange County, California.   I found the 'natural' picture interesting but somewhat abstract, so I tried the 'watercolor' option in Photoshop and came up with the picture at the very bottom of the page -- the only time in my experience that this manipulation made a really interesting image.

others: Canon 10D, 1D Mk.II, 1D3, 7D, 1D4, or 7D2; 500 mm F4 IS plus 1.4X converter or 800 mm IS lens; some with fill-flash (2003 - 2013, 2017, 2018)