Necessity does the work of courage.
~Nicholas Murray Butler
Fledging day
Category Archives: Birds
Too close, too far
Ever been too close to a Sandhill Crane? I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but anything’s possible in Florida, I think. Much like a previous encounter with Sandhills, I was pretty dazzled!
We found these at the Viera Wetlands in Brevard County, Florida when we visited in mid-March. It’s such a cool place… be sure to get there someday! We drove the car loop and happened upon these two Sandhills moseying along the dike as if they owned the place.
What a gorgeous bird! And to think that they’re hunted across much of their range.
Ridiculous, really.
I’d been hoping to spot a group of cranes in their migration over Atlanta; tried, in fact, to listen for them anytime I was outdoors in early Spring, but I never got that lucky. Instead I was pursued by two across the dike at Viera… we kept pulling the car forward… me in the grass, backing away in retreat…
These birds are very, very tall.
And not afraid of cameras.
Later in the afternoon we found a pair at their nest… at this, they were alarmed by our presence and we left to watch some Blue-wing Teal that weren’t bothered by us nearby. Someone in a car after us lingered too long near their nest and we heard their unmistakable rattling calls of protest.
And still later in the afternoon, we spotted this… a Sandhill Crane colt! It was far off in the distance, feeding with its parents in the middle of a cow pasture that borders the wetlands. You might have to enlarge this pic to spot the baby… too far away this time!
Nauset Light and around Cape Cod
“Sometimes just looking up and seeing the light is enough.”
~Terri Guillemets
Birders are a generous lot, as a rule. Mention on FB that you’ll be visiting a particular place and before you know it, birder friends will have dinner plans and an itinerary made for you, including convenient stops along the way from the airport where you can find whatever species of bird it is that you’re pining after.
I’d been pining away for Piping Plovers, it being March and all. March is the month when plovers return to NJ beaches from wherever it is that they’ve spent the winter months. March in the Northeast is the most miserable of months, I think, because Spring is so close on the horizon and you want it so badly, but the weather is dank and damp and mostly miserable, cold and gray.
On the tails of a short vacation in Florida, a couple days on Cape Cod in March seemed an impossibility… I’d given away most all of my cold-weather clothes before moving here and going from shorts and flip-flops to thermal underwear and gloves in the span of a week felt ridiculous! But… there might be Piping Plovers!
I spent an afternoon wandering around the city of Boston… remembering the cold and delighting in a Dunkin’ Donuts on almost every corner! Spring had the willows in Boston Commons that lovely green that willows know how to perfect.
Weeping willows are not very common here. Surprising that I should miss them…
The coast of Florida is, of course, beautiful and I’m glad for each and every chance to visit, but beaches there lack something that beaches in the Northeast have in abundance. It might be the wind that never rests. Or air that is thick with salt and the smell of low tide. Oh, how I miss that smell! Maybe it’s just atmosphere and the feeling of home. There are beautiful and scenic places where I live now, but no easy access to the ocean.
We met up with a local Cape Cod bird club and spent an appropriately cold and misty, rainy morning on the beach at Nauset Light (thanks for the suggestion Mojoman!) looking at winter birds. We wandered along dirt roads on the Cape looking at ducks and exploring the ponds that Mary Oliver described in her poetry.
We stayed at a bed and breakfast perched on Gull Hill in Provincetown… and scanned the harbor for breaching whales while we had afternoon wine and cheese and watched Northern Gannets dive into the ocean from the warmth of our rental car at Herring Cove Beach.
Race Point Beach had plover fencing installed, but no Piping Plovers, yet.
Compensation for the lack of plovers was found at the wharf in P-town, where we found Harlequins and Common Eiders within spitting distance! Eiders have always been one of those birds for me… I’d never had a really satisfying look at them before and anywhere that one can see Harlequins without a treacherous jetty-walk (like at Barnegat Light) is worth a visit.
Of course I didn’t have a proper camera with me, you know.
Silly.
I’d love to get back to Cape Cod in the summer someday… maybe even visit Nantucket. I’d imagine late September to be the perfect time of year… maybe I could catch the Piping Plovers before they depart…
A show of feathers
A caveat*
Photographing terns on a nude beach requires careful cropping.
; )
So my dilemma was this: resist the opportunity to photograph the royal terns, laughing gulls, willets and black-bellied plovers loafing together in the sunshine at Playalinda Beach on the Cape Canaveral National Seashore or bare (tee hee!) with the discomfort of using a camera amid a bunch of naked people.
I chose the assumption that those folks wouldn’t mind the long-as-my-arm telephoto lens so long as I didn’t ever point it directly at them. I never figured on them to walk purposefully, almost, and repeatedly through my frame. Or to approach me, full-frontal(!), to talk camera gear.
What was I thinking!!!
Never again, never again.
Lesson learned.
*parts of this photo have been excessively blurred in deference to the comfort of readers.
Florida’s magic
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| The Anhinga, a silent bird who lives mainly in the silent places of the wildnerness… |
A weekend visit in late January to St. Marks and Wakulla Springs brought close looks at some of Florida’s most magical and strange birds. Most everything one sees in Florida feels exotic. It’s the setting, for sure… everything mist-laden and draped with Spanish moss…
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| Focus on the dagger-like bill, used to impale fish. Yikes! |
But there’s something, also, about the birds themselves that works on me. Many are new to me… “lifers” as birders would say. They’re also confiding for some reason… “tame” almost. The photographer in me enjoys this chance to get close without too much disturbance to the bird. Being able to ponder the ribbing on the outer tail feathers of an Anhinga, for example, or that acutely-pointed bill…
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| An apple snail specialist… |
The boat ride at Wakulla Springs was a treat… close-up views of manatees and my first-ever January Osprey. The Limpkin (above) was the best find, though… a cool looking bird that I’d heard described as a very large Rail with the habits of an Ibis. I mistook a juvenile White Ibis for a Limpkin the last time I was in Florida… so I need to get to know both species better.
There’s a visit to South Florida planned for late next month, which will require learning a couple new wading birds… I can’t wait!
Parting glances
Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park is ~the~ place to see confusing fall warblers… the trees are young and small so, in theory, you can see the birds easily, down low.
I’ve had parts of 14 species of warblers there in the last couple weeks:
Most all of this young Common Yellowthroat…
The water-tossed mantle of the Black-Throated Green in last week’s post…
The pale supercilliums of many Tennessee Warblers…
The briefest of looks at the yellowish wing bars of a Chestnut-Sided Warbler…
The white “handkerchiefs” on a handsome Black-Throated Blue…
The indistinct dull olive of a young Blackpoll…
(You get the idea!)
Are warblers still passing thru where you are or is it winter already?
Bad bird photo of the week
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| Confusing fall warbler edition… happy guessing! |
Up close with a Black and White
I spent a couple hours one morning last week at the Jekyll Island Banding Station; it’s Georgia’s oldest continually operated station. There’s always a nice variety of birds and the folks who run the station, for a couple weeks each fall, are happy for visitors.
This particular warbler, a Black and White, was quite feisty!
And handsome, of course…
Note the “target” penned on the bander’s finger… he says it gives the birds somewhere to aim their bites!
; )
Where the sea lends large
St. Simons Island is one of the coolest places to spend the low tide hours… the sea retreats almost a half mile and leaves in its place endless tidepools and sandbars for exploring…
There are joys in every moment. Some, like the Black Skimmers that fly past, hold a little tease and leave a wake of longing…
When I’m finished looking for seashells, there’s always birds to entertain me…
like these Boat-tailed Grackles playing King of the (sand)Castle
: )
(I forget how noisy they are when I’m away from the coast for too long!)
Royal Terns are grown, but still begging from their parents.
(endlessly entertaining!)
A walk among the birds at low tide teaches me to measure happiness by nothing I can hold… nothing I can catch.
; )
I sneak close on my belly, camera in hand, for a better look at the spot of mustard on a Sandwich Tern’s bill…
and squat low over the water with a Willet.
The beach is stretched out as far as it can go as I pause to consider a young Piping Plover feeding at the far end of a tidepool…
Can my imagination make this bird a familiar?
(Could be… though its banded companion was hatched in the Great Lakes area this past summer.)
I keep walking and exploring the quiet changes the outgoing tide has left; entire oceans are moved one inch at a time…