Went last Saturday at Pointe Mouille, with the hope to see a few early shorebirds. Not such luck (except for the killdeers), but I still managed to have a good time, despite the strong wind. There was still an important number of waterfowl present (Scaups, Ring Neck Duck, thousands of American Coots, Pied Billed Grebes, Canada Geese), and a few Bonaparte's Gulls, as well as some Common Terns, Double Creasted Cormorans. Best bird of the day was an early marsh wren.
Having met at the start a fellow birder who had been criss-crossing the preserve with his bicycle for hours, I knew pretty much from the start that my quest for shorebirds was going to be vain, so I relaxed a little bit, and tried to bag a few decent pictures. They were hundreds of tree Swallows arround, and I took up the challenge to digibins a few swallows in flight. As expected, I turned out it was not very easy, but I managed to take a few OK pictures.
Tree Swallow, digibinsed
Common Tern, digibinsed
Common Tern, Digibinsed
Bonaparte's Gull and American Coot, DigiscopedI was quite surprised to see that the 2 Bonaparte Gulls I've seen were not yet in complete breeding plumage.
American Goldfinches in my back yard. 2 Pine siskins are still around, and I am hoping for a nest!!!!
7 comments:
That swallow picture is pretty neat for digibinning!
"Hoping for a nest"?
I thought you were busy building a nest yourself the last couple of months!
:-))))))
Jochen
The nest is pretty much ready, actually, we are just waiting for the hatching season!!!!!!
We are still hoping to make a trip together to Crane Creek in 2 weeks!
The nest ain't ready until you got yourself one of FisherPrice's "aquariums", preferably a remote-control one.
Seriously, they are very, very good. We actually have two.
And get Dr. Brown's stuff.
Crane Creek is good as it doesn't take too long to walk around it and it has benches to sit on and wait for things to fly by.
Wish I was there now...
In flight??? How do you manage to get enough stability???
Mel : well, I try to have the maximum speed from my camera (sport mode), and use the "burst" mode (thus reducing the pixel definition to 3 megapixels). I take a lot of pictures, and discard 95% of them.
Once a while I get lucky and one turn out to be just mediocre (the other ones are totally crap)
I think wrens build dome-shaped nests, and may be either monogamous or polygamous, depending on species
it's actually doesnt matter - poly or monogamic. they just do it and all. it's their nature
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