{"id":8414,"date":"2018-08-13T22:10:16","date_gmt":"2018-08-14T02:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/?p=8414"},"modified":"2018-08-13T22:10:16","modified_gmt":"2018-08-14T02:10:16","slug":"black-terns-in-the-black-dirt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/?p=8414","title":{"rendered":"BLACK TERNS in the Black Dirt!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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~Three of the 7 BLACK TERNS in the pouring rain at Skinner Lane this evening, 08\/13\/18. Usually I’m not a fan of farm machinery in my shots, but in this case it seems perfect.~\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Wow, what a crazy evening of birding I had tonight! I was feeling optimistic as I headed out to the Black Dirt Region after work. Severe storms had moved through the area and appeared to have dropped a lot of water; I was hoping this would make for some interesting birding. I was planning on covering a fair amount of territory, but my first stop – Skinner\u2019s Lane – \u00a0ended up being so good, I never left until it was dark. It was raining pretty hard. In fact, it rained pretty good for almost the entire evening, only letting up when I was getting ready to leave. When I arrived, there\u00a0was a pretty good collection of shorebirds present: BLACK-BELLIED PLOVERS (3), Semipalmated Plovers (4), Least Sandpipers (3), Killdeer (many), and one bird that I initially thought was a Semipalmated Sandpiper but for the moment I’m leaving unidentified (see below).<\/p>\n

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~Photos were tough, but this one turned out halfway decent. Black Terns at Skinner Lane, 08\/13\/18.~<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I was just about to leave when I noticed a group of peeps had flown in without my seeing them. It was a group of what I’m pretty sure were Semipalmated Sandpipers. Then things got crazy. A small flock of larger birds flew in – they circled the field once and then flew to the south and out of sight. By this time, all my gear was wet and really, I had now idea what the birds were because I just couldn’t get a good look. But, then they came back – I jumped into my car and grabbed my camera to get some shots. They circled the field 3 more times and then headed northeast and did not return. I must have been a little frazzled because I looked at the pics and still couldn’t ID them… I shot a quick photo to Rob Stone who identified them as BLACK TERNS! I was freaking out! I looked at my photos to get a count – I had a single shot with 7 in it!<\/p>\n

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~BLACK TERNS in the black dirt, 08\/13\/18.~\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

More shorebirds arrived after the terns had departed – I added 2 Wilson’s Snipe, 7 Pectoral Sandpipers, and another group of Semipalmated Sandpipers to my list for the evening. What a great night of birding; once again, bad weather=good birds.<\/p>\n

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~I like this shot because you can really see the rain coming down. It’s a grainy, rainy shot of BLACK TERNS at Skinner Lane, 08\/13\/18.~\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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~BLACK TERNS at Skinner Lane, 08\/13\/18.~\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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~I’m not sure what this bird is. I’m wondering if it’s a Sanderling – I’m not sure if you can see it in the photo, but the bird had hints of rufous on its head and back, and the size seems possibly good for Sanderling (see photo below with Killdeer as reference). Any thoughts on this bird, please leave a comment – thanks! ~\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Wow, what a crazy evening of birding I had tonight! I was feeling optimistic as I headed out to the Black Dirt Region after work. Severe storms had moved through the area and appeared to have dropped a lot of water; I was hoping this would make for some interesting birding. I was planning on … Continue reading “BLACK TERNS in the Black Dirt!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[23,6,15,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-black-dirt","category-orangecounty","category-rarities","category-walkingwaterbirds"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5i3kT-2bI","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8414"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8424,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8414\/revisions\/8424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}