Those action shots are great! Thank you so much for posting those. I've never seen a Tundra Swan or a Northern Pintail before. That must have been so fun to see all these waterfowl.

After consultation, I've decided the sparrows are only a smaller, lighter subspecies of the large reddish Song Sparrows with double wing bars that are common around here. Too bad..thought they were Lincoln's. But they could have been migrating through anyway

Thanks so much! I've been discouraged about my new camera choice after looking at some early Canon EOS 7D bird photo samples..soft images, over exposed, noisy, EEEeew. I was upset, but DB comforted me by pointing out that the first poster had used a cheap Sigma lenses and lightened the image, and the second one had used a doubler. Then I found a professional photographer's website with photos taken using a 7D that were exquisite, but he could have been taking the photos from up close and using a pricey lens. The Canon EOS 7D reviews are full of glowing praise, so I don't know what to think. I checked a chatline and the consensus there was that it was the best thing for the price since sliced bread. Everyone had either bought one or was about to, and that once you spend 3 days reading the thick instruction manual and adjusting all the settings, you'll have increasingly better results with practice, and they seemed to all be delighted with it. Well, I have to have some sort of camera improvement; as it is, I've spent alot of time stalking ducks at the fish hatchery-crawling through weeds, lying in the grass to get as close as possible-yet the Canon 40D camera couldn't handle shadows or water well and most of the photos were barely usable even for ID purposes. Photos taken with the 7D-look great until you zoom in. http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1019&message=33518247 Camera discussion group, reviewing their Canon EOS 7D experiences http://photo.net/canon-eos-digital-camera-forum/00V9r0

I’m starting to think the herd of “animals” might have been females and adolescents! I definitely know what deer look like, and they’re way too big and don’t look really at all like what I saw. I don’t believe elk were ever that far east—in “modern times” at least—and they definitely weren’t elk anyway, not even females or young ones. The main thing that was so absolutely amazing about “these things” is the way the BOUNDED around—almost as if their “toes” weren’t even touching the ground! They almost looked like they were “floating up and down” they moved so easily across the ground! But because of that I think possibly they “looked smaller” than they really were! They MUST have been female/young antelope! And—Centennial didn’t exist when I lived down thataway! Parker Road was 2-lane too, and there was a stop sign at the intersection of Parker and Arapahoe! And Tagawa was the ONLY thing on the west side of Parker! ALL the rest of the land was Richlawn Turf Farm growing fields! (470 had just been opened and was still free when I was moving away from there!) I don’t even recognize the area when I occasionally get down there—get lost after living there for more than fifteen years! (Smoky Hill was built up already back then—pretty new subdivisions, but all houses already!) (I think Broncos at Dove Valley was just being built when I left!) Love your story about pointing out of a parked Wildlife Viewing Car!” He would have gotten me! [When I was a “kid” I was at the local movie with a friend—it was a horror movie called The Tingler, and we were sitting thru it a second time—theater was the only place that was cool in summer! It really was a dumb movie—the “evil thing” that was supposed to “scare” you looked like a strip of fake fur being pulled around on a piece of thread—and it wasn’t scary at all. Everybody else was screaming “at the appropriate times,” and we couldn’t figure out why! So we decided that we were both going to scream at a time when we knew nothing at all “scary” was gonna be happening! We did, and everybody else in the theater screamed too! We thought it was pretty funny—but then we got a “talking to” by the usher! It was still funny!] Another story! The first time (since 1949) that I went up to Yellowstone, 2006, I went in the east gate, and, less than a mile into the Park the cars were all stopped in the road. I was close enough to the ”front of the line” to be able to see the buffalo! Got out and started walking closer and there were a couple hundred buffalo grazing on both sides of the road—and roaming this way and that all over the road. We were parked there for a half an hour, and by then there were cars parked as far as you could see in both directions—everywhere—and just about as many people out of their cars as there were buffalo! (Yeah! Some folks were WAY too close!) We were all talking—the one couple I was talking to was from New York! I have NEVER seen so many people that were SO happy to be in a Traffic Jam! (And I think maybe putting a few buffalo here and there along the Interstates might be the perfect cure for Road Rage!) I went back in ’12—to see the buffalo again, and to see the “terraces” by the north entrance which had had way too many people in ’06! In 2012 there were virtually NO buffalo (near the roads), and the Terraces had “dried up” during the intervening years—but the people were still there! Yeah, I know you don’t see all those birds/animals in your yard—but you are SO lucky, first, to “work” somewhere where you have so much opportunity for wildlife viewing, and then to live where there’s still so much “open land” left—and closer to the foothills! The few birds I named above are pretty much all I EVER get up here—in my yard! And, instead of increasing in summer, for me I pretty much see the same ones! Usually get a few goldfinches in summer, plus some hummers, but then I normally lose most/all of the flickers and downies over summer—and rarely see a Junco in summer! Right now I’m trying to figure out a—possibly—new one I’m seeing! Maybe 6 weeks ago I saw small birds hanging onto the suet cages. My first impression, because of the basic shape, was that they were Juncos, but Juncos aren’t usually “clingers,” and after the first couple brief times I saw them I realized that they looked smaller than Juncos, and not as “roly-poly.” One time I had at least a dozen of them on the two cages! Some were back again today, and now I’m considering the possibility that they’re peewees! The head doesn’t look as “square” as peewees look in most of the pics, but I think that might be what they are! Boy! The illustrations/pics in my (FOUR) bird books sure do make them look different! Googled them and some of what I found look like what I have—and some don’t! Final decision still pending! By the way, on the “log” that I re-drilled to hang horizontally, I filled two little “dishes” on top with broken up nuts and the mealworms I bought, and also filled some of the holes on the sides with peanut butter. I HAVE seen a downy eating the peanut butter a few times, and this morning I saw a chickadee eating some of the nuts! The nuts and worms ARE getting gone, but I’m not seeing who’s eating them—could be blackbirds (which came back today!), so I’m not putting much out till I know for sure if some of the “good” birds (pardon my prejudice!) are getting the nuts and worms or not! With the mealworms I’m pretty surprised I haven’t seen any of the flickers or downies getting some of them! Did you see the recent (month ago?) PBS program about coywolves! Really interesting—I thought! Skybird