Emeralda Marsh

We travelled out to Emeralda Marsh in Lisbon, Florida with the Halifax River Audubon Club. After yesterday's chilly and blustery conditions, today seems like mid-summer with temps near 70 and bright sunny skies.....a perfect day for shooting. We begin in the parking lot with the usual fare.....cardinal, blue jay, red-bellied woodpecker, etc. As we head into the reserve, however, we begin to pick up some new birds for the year. Our first Northern parula makes an appearance. While I don't have my camera in hand, it does give me a great look through the bins. I'll get the photo later. Walking the trail inside the marsh, we get nice looks at a Blue-gray gnatcatcher, several more singing parulas, Pine warbler, and Hermit thrush among others. At the impoundments, I get to capture an event I had never seen before. Two moorhens are squaring off apparently trying to win over the heart of a female who idly sits by and watches the entire affair. It's that time of year here in Florida and a young man's (bird's) fancy turns to love. After the official trip ends, Sharon and I can't pass up the opportunity to stop on the way home at two known haunts of the burrowing owl. These guys are the most reliable subjects we have and have never let us down. Both spots produce with nice looks giving us the perfect conclusion to a pretty perfect day of birding.

Blue Spring State Park

Here in Florida, one of the most beloved creatures we come across is the Manatee. These are truly gentle giants growing to weigh over a ton and eating several hundred pounds of vegetation each day. During the colder months and during cold stretches in Spring, the manatee will congregate in warm bodies of water, mainly springs. They require warmth to survive and thus large numbers show up in places like Blue Spring State Park in Orange City, FL. Over two hundred may show up on any given day and the number of people who come to the spring to see these magnificient beasts is much much higher than that! In addition to the manatee, the spring and its environs play host to many of Florida's most spectacular birds. While on an eco-tour boat today, Sharon and I spotted and photographed such beautiful species as the limpkin, the American bittern, the Purple gallinule, and the Bald eagle. If you plan to visit the spring, don't miss the boat trip after checking out the manatees.....it's a great place to spend the day!

Viera Wetlands

One of the premier spots in East Central Florida for birding is the site of the Viera waste treatment facility, AKA Viera Wetlands. The impoundments of the plant serve as a feeding ground and "home" for both migrants and resident birds. Adjacent to the impoundments, one finds extensive fields where Sandhill cranes forage and Northern harriers skim across the tops of the grasses in search of their next meal. Today's trip yielded 40 species, mostly waterfowl, waders, and "skulkers". As you approach the preserve, there is a large pond on the right which is always promising, and today we got great views of Ring-necked ducks, Blue-winged teal, and a kestril on the wires behind us. The best views of the day included a harrier which worked the field right in front of us as we sat on one of the benches inside the reserve and had our lunch. The harrier spooked a Common snipe which flew up in a panic. We also had a great time watching three Snowy egrets which were feeding by hitting the water with their long bills as they flew over shallow impoundments. I'd never seen that feeding behavior from Snowies before. What can I say.....just another day in paradise.

Back to Florida

We've returned to our second home in Florida for the winter and are excited about revisiting our favorite southern birding spots. Our first trip to Merritt Island NWR of the 2009 season proves to be more than we hoped for. In spite of temperatures that never reached 50 and strong north winds, we still managed to record 47 species. Among the "specialties" were Loggerhead shrike, Roseatte spoonbill, American bittern (that makes two in two days!), Florida scrub jay and Savannah sparrow. All that and we only covered Biolab Road....less than a third of the drivcs and trails afforded birders in this beautiful park. Any birder or anyone interested in nature for that matter simply must have Merritt on their todo list when visiting the "space coast". It is truly one of the birding gems of the US. We'll return next week to another section of the reserve, Black Point Drive, to continue adding to our "year list".

North Carolina 2009

As we head south for the winter like so many of our avian friends, we always make a layover in North Carolina to visit friends and search for new parks to bird. We spent a wonderful week adding to our "yearlist" with species like the Horned grebe, Barred owl, Yellow-rump and Palm warblers and plenty of Ospreys and Red-shouldered hawks. One of the more spectacular sights, however, was a field in Columbia, NC which was hosting not fewer than 1000 snow geese (conservative estimate!). We searched for Ross's amongst them, but since we were parked in the middle of the highway with no shoulder to pull off onto, we were a bit pre-occupied. Nonetheless, the sight was certainly something to behold. The other target bird we nailed down for the year on this trip was the Tundra swan. Last year we had founds hundreds of these magnificient birds in the watery fields of Alligator River NWR, but this year the refuge only yielded one specimen! Where did they go this year? Well, we finally found some, although fewer than previous sightings, at Mattamuskeet NWR. All in all, it was a great way to begin our three months in the south with many more great adventures ahead of us.

VISION Eagle Watch

One beautiful thing about doing Eagle trips is that you always come away with more than you bargained for. Sharon and I led a trip from Bear Mountain Bridge south to Croton Station for our local community group, "VISION". While the temps hovered in the teens and was actually 8 degrees at the time of departure, we still had 19 hearty souls join us and enjoy watching no fewer than 26 Bald eagles in flight, roosting, riding the ice flows on the Hudson, and perched in a couple of nests we pointed out. Along with these sightings, we had a close-up view of a fine Cooper's hawk and sightings of a number of different kinds of ducks including Redheads, Canvasbacks, Greater scaup, Common mergansers, Ruddy ducks, and more. We finished the day of with an inspiring flight of a Northern harrier over the grasslands at Croton Park. All-in-all, one fine day of birding with many fine folks!!!

Well, Christmas holidays got the best of me, so it's been a while since my last posting. I'll try to catch up here with reports on a few trips which have been very productive. At the end of the year, we took a day trip up to the Adirondacks in search of a reported Northern Hawk owl. A life bird for both Sharon and me, we figured it was worth the 500 mile round trip to bag it....a bag it we did! We had set our GPS to the street where it was last seen, and as we finally approached our destination, there was the owl. Every so often, chasing pays off. We also "chased" a Red-headed woodpecker located at Stonykill Farm just north of Beacon, NY. This bird was only a half hour away, so the effort was much less, but nonetheless productive. After spotting the woodpecker, we travelled south and scoped Storm King Mountain from the eastern shore of the Hudson. We found what we were looking for there as well....a pair of beautiful Golden eagles. One great thing about this time of year....it's easy to pile up the list of "year-birds". Last but certainly not least were our Horned larks which were found about an hour away in Pine Bush, NY. All of these birds were reported to us via the RBA on the Internet and all produced positive results. This is certainly a great age in which to be birding with the web and digital imaging at our disposal. We are preparing to head out to Florida in a week or two and we'll keep you posted as to how we make out on our birding adventures there. I promise to make an effort to me a bit more timely in our reports.

Bosque del Apache

One of the highlights of our New Mexico birding adventure is to spend some time at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Reserve. The sight has large impoundments surrounded by desert and serves as an oasis for migrating and wintering birds. Among the largest numbers of visitors for the winter are included the Snow goose and the Greater and Lesser Sandhill cranes. These birds fly great distances to come to the relative warmth and safety of the Bosque and birders and nature photographers fly from even greater distances to view the assemblage. Our first exposure to the refuge was beyond our wildest expectations. Literally thousands of cranes and geese swam and waded through the shallow pools where they were afforded ample supplies of food as well as protection from many of their natural enemies. Their shear numbers and the fact that they were surrounded by water kept many of their predators at bay. One of these, the coyote, was seen by us on several occasions, but it was only away from the reserve in a dry desert canyon that we actually witnessed a kill by this carnivore. More about that in a later posting. For now, enjoy the photos of the cranes, the Snow goose along with the smaller Ross's goose and the lone coyote who hunted in vain while we watched.

Nine life-birds

It doesn't get much better than this. We expected to find some new life-birds on our trip to southcentral New Mexico, but 9 in one day? We travelled south about 1 1/2 hours from our motel in Socorro to the Perga Dam region. Our first stop was at Animas Creek Road, a small one lane road through scrub desert and an irrigated nursery. One life bird after another made an appearance starting with the cardinal-like Pyrrhuloxia and quickly followed by the "clownfaced" Acorn woodpecker. Say's phoebe, Brewer's sparrow, the White-winged dove (new for our North American list), Brewer's blackbird all made an appearance along this species-rich stretch of blacktop. Later at the Perga and Elephant butte dam areas, we added the Western and Clark's grebes and the Lesser goldfinch. Nine in one day! Definitely worth the time and effort to get to the "Land of Enchantment".

New Mexico - Day 2

Day 2 of our New Mexico birding trip finds us in the south-central part of the state at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. Snow geese, Ross's geese, and Sandhill cranes arrive here in the thousands during late September and will winter here until they return north in early spring. The numbers of geese and cranes are almost too much to comprehend as the sights and sounds of their movements throughout the refuge are a constant stimulation to our senses. We spent the morning learning about some of the behaviors of the cranes which made the morning's observations all the more impressive. Bowing, crouching, and tail wagging are all warnings to other cranes not to invade another's space. If the warning goes unheeded, then the intruder is chased off with kicks and bites from the parent cranes. Birds are not the only inhabitant of the refuge as we quickly found out. A lone coyote, apparently indifferent to our presence, trotted up and over an imbankment and passed withing 25 yards of our birding troupe. Obviously, he had something more important than us on his mind. The evening hours were no less spectacular as we watched hundreds of cranes fly into the relative safety of a shallow pond near the refuge entrance. Tomorrow, we'll head further south for new habitat and new species .

We're off on a great birding trip to south-central New Mexico. Our guides are the experienced and well respected Don Freiday and Pete Bacinski from New Jersey Audubon. Sharon and I are hoping to amass a good number of life-birds on this trip as it is our first venture into New Mexico. Day 1 found us beginning outside Albuquerque at Tres Pistoles Canyon. Almost immediately, we began checking off new species. Curve-billed thrashers, Western bluebirds, and a Townsend's solitaire were all in great view. From here, we ventured up into the Sandia Mountains and Sandia Crest, an elevation of over 10,000 feet. Our target birds were the Rosy-finches, but a crowd on the decks near the feeders spoiled our chances at these birds. A nearby flyover of a Sharp-shinned hawk and nice close views of two more life-birds, the Mountain chickadee and the Steller's Jay, were more than ample compensation for the missed finches. We plan to return to the mountain later in the trip and perhaps our luck will be able to photographed the finches at that time. We ended the day with a trip to the Rio Grande Nature Center and had great views of wood ducks, ruddies, common and hooded mergs, and more. After a successful day like this, what more could we ask for? Now it's off to Socorro and an early visit to Basque del Apache tomorrow.

Back to the Bent

I have posted reports from one of our favorite birding locales, Bent of the River in South Britain, CT, several times before. The great thing about the Bent is that there is something new every time we go. A number of feeders right outside the observation deck at the Audubon Center affords us the opportunity to get nice and close to our subjects, and as they busy themselves taking advantage of the smorgasbord provided by the kind people at Audubon, they pay us little mind. Hence, photographs rank on the readily available end of the scale. Today's treat was several Fox sparrows foraging on the ground below one of the nearby feeders. These rufous beauties were a bit difficult to get off a clear shot of at first as they were concentrating their efforts below some thick brush. Patience paid off as it usually does, however, and one of the birds moved up into the open and gave us nice looks and nice shots. Special thanks to Audubon educator Jim Drennan who helped us identify the bird and stayed on to offer more advice for quite a while. Just one more reason to make this one of our premier "photo-op stops."

The North country

We're finishing our 2 week tour of northern New York, affectionately known to we New Yorkers as the "North country". The Adirondacks experience a climate in which the onset of winter generally occurs around Thanksgiving and lasts through April. This year, we got a head start with 10 inches of snow falling over the Lake Placid area on October 29th! While inconvenient as far as travel goes, we were already at our destination in Higley Flow on the Raquette River, and the new fallen snow made for a photographers paradise. The day after the heaviest snowfall, we were blessed with crystal clear deep azure skies and brilliant sun. The perfect winter wonderland day and it was not yet Halloween! Birds which had been scarce at the feeders were suddenly more than anxious to convene for an easy meal. The landscape made for photo ops which you just couldn't fail with. By the end of the week, warmer temperatures had all but erased this spectacular canvas. But the images are recorded by the digital camera for posterity and for me to share with you.