Powerlines=birds!

The part I like most about birding is using knowledge to find birds. There is one part of my town in which there are huge powerlines that have great habitat underneath. I drive by it all the time and I cringe because I want to survey it. Well I finally did and now I go alot. Birdgirl would love this place because there are numerous prairie warblers. They are everywhere. There is also a good amounts of blue winged warblers, orioles, indigo buntings, and towhees, and bluebirds. The biggest surprise was a fledgling screech owl, that was in a bush not 4 feet off the ground. Ofcourse I didnt have my camera. I feel if you put the camera in the car the birds will come out. URghhh






Well here are some songbird picturess!

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.

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

Warblers Back In Town

Took a birding trip over to Jamaica Bay and Hempstead Lake state park. It is still a little early but we had some nice birds. I had two life birds today.. YAYAYA I spent all winter practicing my warbler calls and it paid off. We started at Jamaica Bay where it seemed slow. I am hopefully going next weekend. We had A black crowned night heron, myrtle and yellow warblers. I perfectly knew the yello warblers song... sweet sweeet so so sweet. They were hard to get pictures of. Then we left for Hempstead. We had yellow and palm right off the bat, but for some reason did not get a picture. Then we started the walk. And my warbler calls paid off again. BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ BEEEEEEEE. I yelled blue winged warbler. The darn thing never left the bushes, teasing us with his song. Then we had a Blue headed vireo. It was awesome looking. One of my life birds. I got one good picture of him. Then right before we got into car, I heard a crazy call> Prairie warbler> had some cool photo ops with this guy. LAst pictures are best

Below is the Yellow Warbler and Yellow rumped Warbler

Blue headed vireo below



Here starts the awesome prairie warbler