Thursday, May 21, 2009

Memorial weekend excitement

Bird-boy is ready for this upcoming weekend. I have been waiting for this for 2 months. My birding extravanganza. I am goin up to the the warbler breeding ground in vermont. My uncle owns a cabin on a huge mountain road in southern vermont. The habitat is unbeleivable. There are possibably 5 houses and millions of birds. Well I hope there is. The road has all habitats. At the base is a hgue field with nesting bobolinks. Then you wake your way up a stream wetland habitat, more fields, and dense dense conifers. My uncle is a birder and says its awesome. SOme key warblers he said nesting that I am excited for is Blackburnian,canada,magnolia,bt green, bt blue. Its a bird-boys candyshop. Wish me luck and i hope to come home with some beautiful shots.

Bird-boys anger--- Maybe I am excited because my warbler luck in New york sucks. This blue winged warbler shot i got the other day. He was singing right at me. When i took the shot a leaf must have swayed in fornt of his face urrrrrrrrrgggggg

Monday, May 18, 2009

Small birds in flight....too hard

I find it almost impossible to get a passerine in flight. They are so fast and unpredictable. Every picture I ahve of a small bird in flight is quite horrible. There is something that always can go wrong. I had a scarlet tanager as you can see below, perfectly in focus off the branch... too bad i was on the worst possible shutter speed making the red bird look black.

The parairie warbler is just bad


Swallow out of frame

Yellow warbler that can be confused with a plane.





Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Nesting warblers

I traveled to a local nature preserve yesterday. It was late about 5. I can not get enough of warblers so when my parents can drive me somewhere, were gone. Well we took a path through these huge powerlines. The habitat beneath them was awesome. Tons of prairie warblers called. Dont forget the blue wings. I really hope i can pull a golden winged warbler from that place this year. We were there for about a half hour and also had redstart, b and white, oriole, and scarlet tanager. This weekend i will wake up early and see if anything is different. Urggh school. I should go to tommorow but noooo, math class at 7:45 ewww










Monday, May 11, 2009

More migration

Here are some more pictures from Jamaica Bay and forest park. The coolest part of the trip was a canada warbler. Such awesome colors. Sadly the only picture of him i got was him high tailing it out of my frame :( Got some pictures of other things including Northern Water thrush, black throated blue, parula, common yellowthroat, american redstart



























Saturday, May 9, 2009

Spring Migration!

I really do love spring migration. I went to two birding hotspots today. We started the morning at Jamaica Bay. My favorite bird ever is the magnolia warbler. yet for some reason I have never seen one. When its left im right. When the magnolia is the south garden at Jamaica Bay im in the north. Well today i hit it perfectly. A quick 5 second glimpse made me happy. There were birds everywhere today. We also stopped at forest park where i got a lifer canada warbler..AWESOME!! Here are some pictures but not all at once.

above is btg warbler


above is b&w warbler


above and below chesnut sided warbler at forest park waterhole




Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Barred Owl Back On Nest

Last year, I found a Barred Owl nest. It was awesome. I called up a friend and cursed so much i was so happy. They produced two young last year. Well I got a call that they were back in the same tree this year. I went to check it out. Sure enough big mama flew out of the whole when i got close. Not great picture but my first Barred Picture! yay

Monday, May 4, 2009

Warbler Madness

I went to Jamaica Bay again this weekend. It was crazy. I spent along time training my bird songs. It was almost usless. There were so many birds calling I had no clue where to start. I had around 13 lifers. Unfortuneally it was very gloomy and almost impossible to get a picture of birds with such little light. There were tree swallows all around. I had fun taking pictures of them and the house wrens.

This one was very upset the tree swallow stole his house :(















Bird List
warblers
yellow
myrtle
parula
black and white
common yellow
nashville
chesnut sided
black throated green
black throated blue
blue winged
ruby crowned kinglet
white eyed vireo
blue headed vireo
white crowned sparrow
green winged teal
baltimore oriole
orchard oriole
rose breasted grosbreak
scarlet tanager
great crested flycatcher
tree swallow
rough winged swallow
chimney swift
barn swallow