By Mike Busch

With the chaos of the holidays and trying to close the books for the year, many of us struggled to get out this week, including me.

Luckily the Long Island Wildlife Photography group, now almost 10,000 members strong, always has  a bunch of talented photographers fanned out finding some great stuff for the rest of us to enjoy.

Normally I try to keep this feature maxed out around 40 photos, this week I stretched it to 50 and could have kept going.

One of the standouts you will see below is the Mountain Bluebird, a bird that breeds in Alaska and the Yukon and spends time in up and down the West Coast all the way down to Mexico.  Somehow a few have made their way to Long Island this week as you will see a few featured below.  I have never seen one but thanks to the group I will keep my eyes peeled.

It was also a very active week for both immature and adult Bald Eagles.  Some estimate that we have at least 8 nesting pairs on Long Island now but if the number of juvenile birds seen over the last few weeks is any indication, these numbers may explode over the next several years.

This week Vicki Jauron gets another cover shot (she probably holds the record by now) with a beautiful image of Snow Buntings in flight.

I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and hopefully Santa will deliver some of you some new camera equipment!

 

Vicki Jauron | Snow Bunting

Bob Arkow | Peregrine Falcon

Brian Doherty | Black Capped Chickadee

Doug Henderson | Long Tailed Duck

Jason Frank | Eastern Meadowlark

Jason Frank | Mountain Bluebird

Lorraine Sepulveda | Squirrel

 

 

Mike Firestone | Juvenile Bald Eagle

 

More images on pages 2,3,4,5 and 6