Sams Lake Bird Sanctuary
Last Saturday morning I went to Sams Lake Bird Sanctuaryin Fayetteville, Georgia. It takes approximately one hour and a half drive from where I live. I drove there with my wife and grandson, we take this as a outdoor activity. The weather forecast the day before called for a sunny and cool day perhaps 61 degrees at noon. They were wrong as always. We got to the place and the temperature was at that time 34 degrees, sunny but cold. Good thing that we were prepared for that effect. The problem was that in such cold temperature there were no birds to shoot pictures. So I went around the area to check the sanctuary. The place is not bad at all, it has several look out points as well as trails that allow you to circle around the wet areas and ponds. There’s a beaver dam but was barred from visitors. Later the temperature went up to the 50’s and I saw, not photographed:
These signs are at the entrance by the parking area
- Downy woodpecker 1
- Cooper’s Hawk 2
- Brown-headed nuthatch 1
- Red Tanager 1
- Yellow warbler 3
I heard many woodpeckers all over but I couldn’t find them! Same happened with song birds. They were hiding obviously!
I took some shots of birds on flight:
- Turkey Vultures
- Black Vultures
- Flocks of Great Blue Herons
I’m almost sure that this Sanctuary gets very busy when most birds return from their migrations, I think I’d be worth it to come back here then.
We returned home on the early afternoon. By the way I forgot to mention that I was trying and testing my new camera Canon 5D Mark II ( Thank’s to Lucy) I wanted to have a full frame sensor digital camera for long time. 🙂
Black Vulture
Great Blue Herons
All photographs are © H.J. Ruiz – Avian 101
H.J. Ruiz - Avian101 
I hate to tell you the bad news, but those are Black Vultures,not Turkey Vultures. 🙂 Otherwise nice photos. H.J.
I changed the quality of the photos, I didn’t post a Turkey Vulture in this essay. Thanks Bob, I had my PS optimizer into low quality by mistake. It’s fixed.