I went to Wallkill River NWR and walked the Liberty Loop this morning. I went out primarily looking for warblers, but I only managed to find several Yellow Warblers and Common Yellowthroats. I was pleasantly surprised to find my first Bobolinks of the season, and to make it even better they were within decent photo distance. These photos are a bit noisy; I had the ISO very high because the morning was very gray.
Tricia and I spent a week on vacation visiting her brother Kevin in Fort Collins Colorado. Although we did a good amount of birding on the trip, the highlight for me was not bird related because Tricia and I got engaged while we were there. We took a hike on Lumpy Ridge Trail at Rocky Mountain National Park, where I proposed and Tricia accepted! It was an incredibly joyful day for me. Huge thanks to Kevin (and friends), I couldn’t have pulled it off without their help.
As I said, we did do a good deal of birding on our trip. Below are the top ten photos of birds that where life birds for me on this trip. My criteria for the list combined two major aspects, number one: how exciting it was to see the bird for the first time and number two: the quality of the photograph.
TOP TEN LIFE BIRD PHOTOS – COLORADO TRIP 2013
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Stay tuned, I will be doing a post of “honorable mentions” shortly. It will include more photos of life birds for me as well as some of my better shots of some more familiar birds.
What a spectacular little bird! Huge thanks to everyone (there were many!) involved in locating and re-locating this beautiful rarity, especially Rob Stone, Curt McDermott, John Haas and Ken McDermott. What a great day to be a birder!
On my way to the bank this afternoon I spotted my first Green Heron of the season at the small pond right around the corner from our house. I know I say this about a lot of birds, but Green Herons really are one of my favorite birds; I look forward to a summer of having them at that pond.
On Monday evening, Herb Stein posted that he had seen two Sandhill Cranes and a Glossy Ibis out at Wallkill River NWR. I always enjoy walking the Liberty Loop, so today I went to see what I could find. It was a nice warm evening, a little bit windy, but very pleasant. It made for a nice afternoon of birding. I had 23 species during my walk, with two highlights. The best bird of the night was definitely a single SANDHILL CRANE. What a fabulous bird, I feel so lucky to have seen this bird and to have managed a couple of distant photos, which I have cropped:
The second highlight for me was a DUNLIN in adult breeding plumage. This bird confounded me until I got home and looked it up. This bird was pretty far out, so here again is a distant photo that has been cropped:
What a great night of birding! Many thanks to Herb Stein for posting. Here’s my list for the evening:
Canada Goose X
Mute Swan 4
Wood Duck 1
Mallard X
Northern Shoveler 1
Green-winged Teal 8
Great Blue Heron 5
Turkey Vulture 1
Northern Harrier 1
Bald Eagle 1
Red-tailed Hawk 1
Sandhill Crane 1 First reported by H Stein
Killdeer 8
Spotted Sandpiper 1
Greater Yellowlegs 5
Dunlin 1
Red-bellied Woodpecker 1
Blue Jay 1
American Crow X
Eastern Bluebird 1
American Robin X
Song Sparrow 1
Red-winged Blackbird X
I guess it is a busy time of year, both in real life and in my birding life. I have managed to get out birding, but it has been harder to find the time to write posts about it. On Friday I had some work on Long Island, so I decided to stay the night with my sister Meghan and her husband Tim. After my appointments I went up to Lloyd Harbor to do some birding. I stopped at West Neck Beach briefly and got some good looks at a flock of Brandt and took some photos of a cooperative Great Egret:
I then continued up to Target Rock NWR, which was a nice spot and fun to explore but relatively few birds were present. I did get a nice look at a couple of Little Blue Herons (a life bird for me!) and several Snowy Egrets.
I only stayed at Target Rock for a short time; I was going to meet Meghan at Heckscher Park in Huntington. There had been a Tufted Duck at the pond there for quite some time. On my way back I stopped on the road where I had 10 Long-tailed Ducks (out too far for photos), a couple of Osprey and many Greater Yellowlegs.
We did not locate the Tufted Duck at Heckscher Park, but we did have a good look at an Osprey looking for fish in the pond, many Double Crested Cormorants, and this leucistic Canada Goose that was causing a ruckus:
On Saturday, Tim and I played golf at Bergen Point Golf Course on the south shore of Long Island. I had my camera with me but I did not manage to get any photos of the many Osprey that where fishing in the ponds on the course. It was a short but sweet visit to Long Island with good birding too!
I only have time to post a quick photo right now, huge thanks to Rob Stone and of course Danny Messina who found the bird.
I had a really nice afternoon of birding after work on Monday. The weather was nice, cool and sunny. My first stop was at Glenmere Lake to see if anything interesting had come in. There was still a pretty good collection of waterfowl present, including Green-winged Teal, Ring-necked Duck, Lesser Scaup, many Bufflehead, and the highlight was definitely a a single TUNDRA SWAN floating with a group of Mute Swans.
Afterwards, I headed over to my favorite spot, Wallkill River NWR, to walk the Liberty Loop. There was plenty of activity there; I spent most of my time looking at waterfowl and shorebirds. I struggled with the shorebirds as usual, but it was a lot of fun getting my first good dose of shorebirds for the year. I ended up with 28 species, and it was really nice to just walk the loop and enjoy being outside.
Mute Swan X
Wood Duck 2
Mallard 4
Blue-winged Teal 8
Northern Shoveler 10
Northern Pintail 1
Green-winged Teal X
Bufflehead 1
Great Blue Heron 7
Turkey Vulture 5
Northern Harrier 2
Red-tailed Hawk 1
Killdeer 5
Solitary Sandpiper 1
Greater Yellowlegs 8
Lesser Yellowlegs 2
Pectoral Sandpiper 8
Wilson’s Snipe 22
Mourning Dove 3
Red-bellied Woodpecker 1
American Kestrel 1
Peregrine Falcon 1
American Crow X
Black-capped Chickadee 1
American Robin X
Song Sparrow X
Red-winged Blackbird X
Common Grackle X
… is another life bird for me! I went out to Glenmere Lake this afternoon to try for the Long-tailed Duck again and to see if the second round of storms brought in any new birds. I was very happy to find this Red-necked Grebe:
This is another distant shot that I have cropped pretty heavily. It has been a little frustrating that these birds are too far away for decent photos, but that is easily outweighed by the excitement of seeing a new species for the first time. There were fewer birds present today, but it was still a productive stop:
Thanks again to Rob Stone for turning me on to Glenmere Lake, it has been awesome for me this week!
…is a life bird for me. Thanks to Rob Stone alerting me, I was able to get to Glenmere Lake in Florida NY today after work to see some really good birds, including a beautiful Long-tailed Duck. Here is a very distant photo, heavily cropped:
When I got home I read John Haas’ post at Bashakill Birder and learned that due to the thunderstorms that passed through last night, there was a major fallout of birds. John wrote specifically about Sullivan County, but I imagine that I saw these birds in Orange County for the same reason. I had never birded at Glenmere Lake before, but it is now on my radar for birding spots. Here is my species list for the day:
Canada Goose X
Mute Swan 2
Wood Duck 4
Mallard 5
Greater Scaup 1
Lesser Scaup 8
Long-tailed Duck 1
Bufflehead 10
Pied-billed Grebe 4
Horned Grebe 3
Double-crested Cormorant 5
Turkey Vulture 3
Osprey 2
Belted Kingfisher 1
Red-bellied Woodpecker 1
Tree Swallow X
Black-capped Chickadee 1
American Robin X
Red-wing Blackbird X
Here’s one more photo that includes five different types of water birds floating together:
Click on the photos to enlarge.
