Friday 18 May 2007

Help from fellow Bloggers: I and the Bird # 49

Ooooh, conditions are currently not good for birding, the are excellent!
So I am basically off while writing this. I have a few important things not even remotely connected to feathers on today's agenda: even in May, life is unfortunately not only about birding, as even a birder must gather food, keep the nest tidy or visit the Secretary of State, just to sound important after mentioning all the uncool household stuff. But if I am really quick, I might fit in an hour or so of birding.

Yes!!

"Oh!" you say? Birding again? But you were promised something to READ, and yet again I don't deliver but choose to be away?

I know, this is hard.

But you see, this is why birders embed themselves in the sheltering community of the bloggoshere: a shoulder to lean on and firm support in hard times like these. Right on time and with a precision regarding the achievement of excellency that's almost frightening,
I and the Bird is back, this time edition Number 49!

If you feel the need to read, visit this astonishing edition here on Via Negativa, a spectacularly unusual perspective on birding! Well worth the clicking around.


By the way, the last post - if I am not mistaken which is actually not likely as I often am, especially when I think I am not mistaken - was the post number 100 on Belltower Birding.

Frankly, I was not paying attention, I had only realized that long after I posted or else I would have taken this as yet another opportunity to write something intelligent, at which I would have failed again. I like traditions.

Here are a few pictures of yesterday's trip to Crane Creek with Laurent. It was really cold and sometimes we even walked away from a good warbler spot just to increase our body temperature through moving our muscles, but we eventually logged 21 species of wood warbler (missing out "only" on three different Prothonotaries others saw but seeing two Mournings), watched a Sora walk around freely and un-skulkingly on a mud flat and had a Woodcock 5 metres besides the trail. Other highlights were three species of Empidonax-flycatchers, a Merlin and ... you get the picture ... just a whole lotta birds!

I still haven't gone through all of my pictures (conditions are good for birding, remember?), but here are two for your valued visual enjoyment!

American Redstart

Wilson's Warbler

2 comments:

Larry said...

I like the pictures.-Wilson is a tough one to get around here.-I don't know how you get such good warbler pictures.-nicely done!

Jochen said...

Thanks, Larry. I didn't see many Wilson's when I birded here in May 2005, but this year there were quite a few around, a strange migration period we're having.
Taking pictures like these isn't hard at Crane Creek, Ohio, where you follow a board walk and are often at eye level with the warblers hopping through. All you need to do then is quickly focus and "shoot". A day at Crane Creek usually brings me to the limit of my Memory Card which allows me to take roughly 500 pictures, so there usually are a handful or more decent ones amongst them!
Very glad you enjoy them, but I do plan on returning to WRITTEN posts instead of only pictures once spring migration slows down...