The Parker River Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island on Coastal Massachusetts is, by far, one of my favorite places to bird. It can be especially fun during migration time, when a lot of birds will stop by on their way one direction or the other. This time of year, we get many warblers, but often other surprises will pop up as well. Take, for example, this Merlin, which was looking around on the side of the road:
A note: all these photos are clickable, leading to larger versions of the images and/or details about camera type, lens type, settings, etc.
Warblers are small, insect-eating birds, that are often difficult to identify and a lot of fun to watch. I've managed to "successfully" (in that I have a photo which will definitively ID the bird, not that I necessarily have a good photo) photographed twenty different types of warblers, all in New England.
The blackburnian warbler on the left is one example of the not particularly successful photographs. It's one of the few times I've ever seen a blackburnian, and it was when I had a less powerful camera and lens combination (400mm lens, 6.1mp camera at the time; now I have a 500mm w/a 14.2mp camera).
After the fold, you'll see a few more photos that are of the poor quality of this one, but most of them are some of my better work, and a few of them are among the best photos I've ever taken, such as this blue-gray gnatchatcher:
I'm kind of happy with some of the photographs I've been getting lately.
Ospreys are magnificent hunters, with a wingspan of 5'-6'. This one in particular flew past me a little while after I'd accidentally scared it off.
Here's a video I found on YouTube of Ospreys building a nest:
That's one of my favorite sounds of Spring. Ospreys are fish hunters, which means they don't stay in frozen areas. They hunt by diving from fairly high heights, grabbing a fish, and then flying off with it.
It's been quite the week for birding. Almost every bird I've photographed below is doing something related to mating, courting, etc. A prime example of this is from Bird #7, below:
I've seen this a few times now, and it's always wonderful to watch. The two males will sort of point their beaks at one another, making a kind of repeated poking motion (more of a dance than anything violent) and then fan their tails out in a bright yellow display. The female, on a nearby branch, will just stand there, sometimes watching, sometimes pretending not to pay attention at all, and then, eventually (I've seen this go on for two days in a row) one of the males will fly off with the female, and the other will just fly off in another direction.
All these photos were taken in Southern Vermont and/or New Hampshire, near the Connecticut River.
Almost every day that I go to work I leave myself a little extra time so I can check out birds on the way. Almost all of these birds were found on my way to or from work, or while I walked the grounds at break, though a few were found on the weekend while I birded the same general territory or in my yard.
I will open with a photograph of a pileated woodpecker, one of the best photos I've ever taken of one:
All these photographs are clickable, leading you to larger versions, with more details (where they were taken, what day, what equipment I used, etc.)
More about pileated woodpeckers can be found at Cornell
Again, I've got a collection of bird photos to share. This collection came a lot faster than I expected. It was a pretty busy birding weekend. I will once again present this as a bird quiz, not giving the bird IDs (but you can click on them to figure them out and see larger photos if you like). Every one of these photos was taken in Southern Vermont or New Hampshire, right near the border between the two states.
As usual, feel free to treat this as an open birds, birding and bird photography thread.
Bird #1 is an extremely common feeder bird:
I see a lot of Bird #2 in New England in the Spring, and hardly any other time of year:
Bird #3 is uncommon where I live, but we've had hundreds hanging out this Winter. Now we're down to a small flock of about 10-20, and I don't expect them to stick around much longer:
I have seen crossbills before once in my life. Today, I almost stepped on one while I was taking one of the feeders down. This one hung out while I photographed it and I had to zoom out to get it in focus.
I don't have as much time for birding as I used to have, but I still manage to squeeze some time in. The holiday weekend gives me the chance to actually put some time into a decent diary about birding.
The location of my office is good, as well, because it's surrounded by wilderness trails and not far from the river so I can have some great break time throughout the Spring (I'm actually planning on organizing a weekly lunchtime bird walk with some of the other employees).
Anyway I'm presenting for you the birding week in review, but including a few choice photos from a week ago Saturday, since that was the real highlight.
After the fold, I'll include a series of photos from the last week, all taken either in Vermont or New Hampshire.
A quick thing: these are all smaller versions of the original photo. Clicking on them gets you to the page where the photos are hosted, with more details about the bird photographed, the location of the bird, etc. Therefore, I will present some of this as a guessing game and you can try to figure out the ID of the birds yourself before I tell you. I am making two exceptions to that, for reasons that will be obvious.
When we first spotted this owl, I thought this was the best look I'd have of it:
I was wrong.
Note #1: all the photographs, save for the one above, are clickable: they lead to larger images which provide details about the photo: settings, configuration etc. They were all taken with a Sigma 50-500mm zoom mounted on a Pentax K20d.
Note #2: this post disparages some birders, but really it disparages people who don't think through their actions or behavior when trying to observe birds. I've made enough mistakes myself as a birder that I don't feel qualified to judge such actions, but I also have the good sense to learn from my mistakes, which I suspect is not the case in the story I reference below.
Note #3: The main part of this diary is all new, referring to yesterday's adventure in tracking down the Northern Hawk Owl. After, I will revisit some pieces I wrote about other owls last year.
I'm not sure how this worked out, but it seems that we manage to find a way to go birding on Superbowl weekend every year now. Not that we don't go birding as often as we can, but last year we went to New Mexico on Superbowl weekend (without realizing it until we figured out that a lot of people were on the same flight as we were who were wearing lots of fangear), and this year we decided to take a drive down to Cape Ann on the Northern coast of Massachusetts and realized after the fact that it was Superbowl weekend again.
Last year, we got stuck in Midway for six hours while people watched the Superbowl on the TVs in the terminal. This year, that seems less likely, since we're going nowhere near Chicago. If we get stuck anywhere, it will be among other birders, who can get just as excited as Superbowl fans, but are much better at doing so quietly.
In many birding groups, people get frustrated when issues of controversy come into play. This group is partially a response to this. While you should feel free to discuss anything that you would normally post on a New England birding group (this includes announcements of birding events, recent sightings, stories about birding, trip reports, photos, etc.), you should also feel free to post about topics that might be problematic in other groups (such as issues connected to ecology, global warming, overdevelopment, etc.)
