Economy got you down?  Looking for ways to save your hard earned do-re-mi?  Thinking of cutting back or cutting off birdseed altogether?  Let them fend for themselves, right?

But wait! Try the new Sharpienator.  One sharpie used only once or twice a day will solve that bird food drain on your scarce resources.  And it is Absolutely Free! You can’t buy the Sharpienator in any store.  But wait.  There’s more!

So, you get the idea.  When the last snows started to melt the action at my feeders returned quickly to null and void.  I am used to having a coops cruise the place on a regular basis.  This year it’s a handsome and very stealthy adult male.  But very little birds manage to visit the feeders anyway.  Goldfinches and such.  Chickadees will scold a Cooper’s Hawk.  At sparrow size all this changes.  They are big enough and slow enough to not risk exposure to a stalking Cooper’s Hawk.

Today it became very clear why even the little guys were not around.  I mean, like, gone, absent from class.  The following sharpie photos were taken in an apple tree that is usually the last stop for birds before they approach my feeders.  He just sat there, alertly monitoring any action in the area.  The last shot of the series below, while not a good bird photograph, shows the hawk in sight of flying prey and just about to launch after it.  Note the complete streamlining of its body feathers from a pose of observation to one of ignition for pursuit.   Also the relative proportion of the head to the body has altered considerably.

Attention wandering:

Attention in the wrong place:

Resigned:

Disinterested:

Interested:

Very interested:

Birds are cool!  Lanny

These images and Avian Art fine art prints are available for purchase. Contact me or View my gallery.

I have a list of folks who get an emailed notice from me with a URL to click on when I have posted a new blog.  There are also times when I just send out photos to the list without bothering to blog about them or post them to a listserve.  Not on the list?  Want to be? Just contact me  saying you want to be on the list or, better yet,  subscribe to Feedburner above, in the right side column for automatic blog feeds to your email.  Getting off the list is just as simple.

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My friend Pete says that he had White-eyed Vireo, one or two, at this location at least three weeks ago and maybe earlier.  The Vineyard Birds II book lists the earliest record for white-eyed as April 29th.  That sure sounds late, but who knows, and how many white-eyeds are seen and recorded on Martha’s Vineyard every spring?  Not that many.  Pete and I were at the pumping station at the head of the Lagoon on the morning of May tenth.  We met up there with Sally, who was on her appointed spring birding rounds.  Everything looked quite dull at first, although a close look at breeding yellow-rumpeds and yellow warblers should not really qualify as dull.  Then we heard the vireo’s call and then the full song.  He acted very much like a local, not a transient, to my eyes,  as though he were not  just passing through.  Of course I already knew he had been seen in the same general spot a number of times, which very likely shaded my judgement.  We saw no evidence that he was gleaning to feed a mate on a nest.  He did sing up a storm, as the photos imply.

The only other migrant of note that we found was a Tennessee Warbler. Pete knew the song.  I was trying to make it into some variable of a Winter Wren.  We did see it, but mostly we heard its distinctive call and could not relocate it even though all three of us were scanning nearby vegetation for quite a while, trying to get an angle on it.  I think it was throwing its song around like a ventriloquist.  We would hear the song; but then two of us would point in directions about ninety degrees apart.  We also remarked that it was feeding and singing close to the ground, rather than favoring the canopy habitat where you might expect it.

The butter-butt photo is a reminder of how exotic a fully feathered example can be.

I have a list of folks who get an emailed notice from me with a URL to click on when I have posted a new blog.  There are also times when I just send out photos to the list without bothering to blog about them or post them to a listserve.  Not on the list?  Want to be? Just contact me (below right) saying you want to be on the list or, better yet,  subscribe to Feedburner above, in the right side column for automatic blog feeds to your email.  Getting off the list is just as simple.

These images and Avian Art fine art prints are available for purchase. Contact me or View my gallery.

Birds are cool!  Lanny

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There were feeding birds of some sort almost wherever I stopped the car…

This third segment of my Florida birding sojourn involves parts of Merritt Island,  a refuge east of Titusville, south of Daytona and within eyesight of Cape Canaveral.

After driving up from Wakodahatchee, I got a place to stay, dumped some gear and made it out for a couple of late afternoon hours to  Merritt Island and chose one of the  more commonly used (and paved) driving tours you can take around the managed impoundments of the preserve.  Black Point I think it’s called.  I stopped in at the park headquarters and store to purchase the Bill Pranty guide to Florida birding.  The next morning at sunrise there was a thin layer of ice on the back window of my rental and I was eager to drive back to the island to run the less-travelled coral and dirt loops along the southern side of the preserve.  This drive included canals, a saltwater bayshore and mudflats… perfect habitats for swimming, diving and wading birds with convenient and frequent access for photographing birds.

Photo tip: on a typical day of shooting, when I actually spent a fair amount of time birding, as opposed to time spent getting to the birding, I was filling one and a half four gigabyte flash cards, taking bird photos in RAW and large Jpegs.  This represents about 450 shots.  I usually do not stop to edit along the way, meaning delete, because I don’t need to and don’t want to take the time.  The exception is when I fill up a card and do not have access to another card right then and there.  I try not to let this happen.

Near the beginning of the driving tour I found a string of resting Stilt Sandpipers, the only ones I saw on the entire trip.  Here’s a flock of winging dowitchers, long-billeds I imagine:

I noticed that some different species associate with ibises, following them around to see what gets stirred up – Pied-billed Grebes, snowies and Little Blue Herons.

Here are two whoppers, meaning I chose to display them, a Wilson’s Snipe and a female Belted Kingfisher, in a really large format, at least on my laptop.  Which do you think is better, to show bird photos that fit neatly into the frame of the blog or large ones like these two which put you closer to the bird, but which may induce you to use sliders up and down and side to side to see the entire image?

I have a list of folks who get an emailed notice from me with a URL to click on when I have posted a new blog.  There are times when I just send out photos to the list without bothering to blog about them or post them to a listserve.  Not on the list?  Want to be? Just contact me (below right) saying you want to be on the list or, better yet,  subscribe to Feedburner above, in the right side column for automatic blog feeds to your email.  Getting off the list is just as simple.

These images and more are available for purchase. Contact me or View store.

Birds are cool!  Lanny     

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