Monday, November 9, 2009
Photos in the dark
Friday, November 6, 2009
Back Bay NWR survey
Did an impoundment and a beach survey yesterday, a combination I refer to as a double-banger. Highlights of the morning survey were a large number of American Coots, Ruddy Ducks, and Lesser Scaup over some sub-aquatic vegetation (SAV) in the bay. The first Tundra Swans of the fall were in B pool, while the Greater Yellowlegs and Dunlin which were in C pool during the last survey were still there. They were joined by a few dowitchers. A young Bald Eagle landed in C storage and appeared to be ill. The last bird of the morning was a cooperative American Bittern pretending to be a stick protruding from the marsh.
The beach survey was rather quiet with only a few gannets and scoters. An odd gull, probably a hybrid of Lesser Black-back and Herring, was studied and photographed.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Blue-winged Teal in the cove
This morning I noticed a small duck following a pair of Mallards around. The light was terrible, but it was clear the duck was one of the teals. The scope helped me decide it was a female Blue-winged Teal. The bill wasn't small enough for it to be a Green-winged Teal and there was no indication of any yellow patch near the bird's tail. After a time, she took off and the blue patches in the wing were obvious. She remained through the morning. Too dark for any meaningful picture of her. She was year yardbird #125.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
A Tale of Two Birds
I have a habit of being out of town or even out of the country when rare birds show up in Virginia. Recently it happened again. My wife and I took our granddaughter to Yosemite where I chose to be out of email contact. After driving back home to Norfolk after returning our granddaughter to her parents, I opened my emails to find that a Roseate Spoonbill had dropped into a cornfield in Augusta County. I checked with John Spahr about the bird's current location and whether he'd like to hook up for a visit. Learning that he had seen the bird earlier, but would be willing to help me, I jumped back in the car with a few things and headed west. Good old Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel on a Friday afternoon added half an hour to the travel time before I had even left Hampton Roads. I didn't have quite enough gas to make it all the way so I stopped as briefly as possible at a gas station near Richmond. Another backup at a bridge, this time over the Rivanna River near Charlottesville during their rush hour, cost another half-hour. I kept in touch with John by cellphone, met and followed him to the site. The landowners had recently given permission to drive on their farm road which made getting to the spot a lot easier. The spoonbill was there but was out of sight at the moment, walking from one edge of visibility to another. Momentarily it was in sight and I could exhale and relax a little. Spent the next hour chatting with the birders there, watching the bird, trying a few photos, watching the bird, chatting. I turned down an invitation to have pizza with John and his wife, jumped back in the car and headed home. It was an uneventful ride; the homeward run after seeing a rarity is always better than the trips after not having seen the bird. But they're not as exhilarating as the run to the bird, filled with expectation. My total miles to and from the bird were 372. If you include the morning miles driven back from Raleigh, the total is 571. By the next day the heat had evaporated so much of the water in the puddles which held whatever the spoonbill was feeding on that the bird had left. A couple of days later a similar bird appeared in Delaware where it was a first state record. Our bird had decided to give a thrill to the birders of another state.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
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