Another excursion to the pond.
Great egret flies low across the water.
Reeds and wind.
It happens everyday.
by James Brush
Category: Birds
My adventures watching, photographing, studying, and writing about birds
Today was a beautiful day for a ride. The sky was clearÂwinter blue with temps in the 70’s and a constant chill breeze making it seem even milder. The sweet warm smell of cedar was thick on the air along the trails. So glad I don’t get cedar fever.
As I rode, I watched a ghostly pale moon slowly climb the afternoon sky, and I decided to count birds species as I did last June on the day after the Summer Solstice.
That day, I saw 20 birds on a 20 mile ride. Today, two days before the first day of winter, I saw 8 birds in 14 miles:
Turkey Vulture… circling lazy, selecting from a veritable buffet of dead deer along the road
Black Vulture… three circling, as lackadaisical as their cousins
Common Grackle… swarming the parking lot at HEB
Great-tailed Grackle… also at HEB, but looking more regal in their iridescent purple than the common ones
American Coot… paddling the lake
Mockingbird… cut fast across the trail and away to the trees
Mallard… a small flock kicking it in a secluded bend in the creek shielded by cedar
American Crow… exploded from a tree on the edge of a meadow, caw-cawing in angry circles as I rode below
It was a good day for the black birds.
The chipping sparrows came back a few weeks ago when it first started to feel like fall. This guy let me get pretty close. He looks a bit different from the ones I shot last spring, but those were in their breeding plummage.
They left back in March about a week after I first started paying attention so I’ve been waiting to see when they would show back up. I’m glad they found us again.
I just wish I could white balance a little more consistently.
Yesterday we had one of those bracing cold mornings. The sky was a crisp blue, and frost covered many of the fields along the highway. It’s the kind of morning that seems to bring out the birds of prey.
I see this red-tailed hawk on many of the cold mornings on my way to work. Except when I have my camera. Yesterday, though, I had the camera, and there was the bird, chillin’ on the pole.
I pulled over and shot a few frames from the car before he flew off. I should have driven past him and shot back so the sun would be behind me. I wouldn’t have had to dodge him as much to bring out the detail on his wings. Next time I’ll try not to be so excited about the bird so I can give just a bit more thought to the photography.
They are magnificant creatures, though. It’s easy to just watch the bird and forget the machine in my hands.
I drove on to work, part of me wishing I had his job…
I’m trying to identify the ducks that are suddenly showing up now that it’s getting cold up north. I finally managed to ID the mystery ducks that spent last winter on the pond near the house when they came back this year. It was easy to figure it out, once I realized they weren’t ducks, but were American Coots.
The other day, I rode down to a small lake near the house and saw these guys cruising along in the fading light.
The one in the back is a mallard, but I don’t know what the two ducks in front of him are. There were a few female mallards farther ahead, out of frame, but these aren’t female mallards.
Any duck experts out there want to help me out?
Another great bird. Over the past few months I’ve developed a thing for egrets and herons. The great blue heron being one of my favorites. When I see one fly overhead, I tend to stop and stare.
I especially love watching them take flight, their slow but sturdy wingbeats pushing them up several feet at a stroke. Unlike the ubiquitous turkey vultures riding lazy on the thermals, the great blue herons seem to have a sense of where they’re going.
This one was settling in to roost for the night atop a tree overlooking the golf course. I wish I’d been clever enough to climb down from the trail where I was riding my bike to get onto the other side of him so the sun would be at my back, but I would have lost the light by the time I got down there.
I took a few pictures and rode on.
This fellow has been hanging around our local pond lately. I know nothing of his personality, but around here being a great egret is simply a matter of not being a snowy egret or a cattle egret.
If only it was so easy to be a great person.
Until Saturday, I had never seen a woodpecker. Heard ’em, but never seen one. Then, last Saturday morning while sitting out back with the pups, I heard a faint rustling high in a tree in the backyard. I looked up and saw an unfamiliar bird with a striped back climbing along the upper branches of the tree.
This isn’t a great picture, but he was moving quite a bit, and I was trying to get something (anything!) so I could ID him before he took off. Fortunately, I got this and by zooming in with Photoshop, I could figure out his species. (I’m pretty sure I’m right).
Later, I put a woodpecker block in one of the hanging feeders. Hopefully he’ll come back so I can get a better look at him (and hopefully a better picture of him, too).
Still, adding a new bird to my list made for a great start to a really nice weekend.
While we were in Orange, I kept seeing this fellow standing in a ditch by the road hunting crawfish. Finally, I stopped to take a picture so I could ID him. He’s a yellow-crowned night heron.
I love the name night heron. It’s such an evocative name, one that fires the imagination. Not quite as good as the Latin version of the black-crowned night heron (nycticorax nycticorax), which translates to night raven, though.
The picture here doesn’t really do him justice as his crown appears more white than the pale yellow it should be. Blame the photographer. The bird himself was living up to his name, which he claimed was actually Moe.
I also added another bird to my life list: the fish crow. I heard what sounded like a nasal quawking, but the birds flying over looked like crows, but the sound was definitely not the hard caw-caw. I listened to some recordings online and consulted many a tome to learn that I had seen fish crows, a fairly common coastal bird.
I took a twenty mile bike ride along the trails and roads around our neighborhood. I found myself keeping track of all the birds I saw along the way and saw 21 different species. Better than a bird a mile.
Great Blue Heron… flying over the creek, slow and beautiful
Snowy Egret… trailing the heron by a few minutes
Great Egret… swooping over the lake and landing
Green Heron… hunting along the edges of the lake. I wasn’t sure what he was. I had to call and leave a description on the answering machine so I could ID him when I got home
Common Grackle, Great-tailed Grackle, European Starling… foraging in a field near a basketball court
Northern Mockingbird… everywhere; it is the state bird after all
Northern Cardinal… until today I had only seen these guys at feeders, but today they were everywhere along one trail
Inca Dove, Mourning Dove, White-winged Dove… they have a trail where they’re the only birds I see
Purple Martin, Barn Swallow… martins in the sky, swallows along the ground, all patrolling the same trail
Blue Jay, House Sparrow… everywhere
American Crow… small flock congregating in the middle of a country road, flew off when I approached… kaw-kaw
Scissor-tailed Flycatcher…. watching from the power lines
Mallard, Muscovy Duck, Swans… feral domestic breeds hanging around the local duck ponds
And that’s just what I could ID as I blazed by on my bike. I know I saw a few that I couldn’t place, particularly sparrows.