Ever been shagged by a rare parrot?

Much thanks to Sharon for posting this to her blog - this is one of the best things I've seen on YouTube since the "Flying Penguins" video that BBC did a few years back for April Fools Day.
(Note that this is for real though!)

More Weekend Birding

As I've mentioned in recent posts, I've not had as much to time to devote to my blog as I would like, and wish I could post a bit more. It's been a combination of less birding, even less bird photography, and even less yet personal time at a computer.
Well, this weekend I got out for a bit, and even got a few photos, and here I am typing at my computer BUT... pBase, where I have reliably kept my on-line galleries for several years now is down, and has been so for several days. I know I could use other free services like picassa online or flickr, but I really like the pBase set-up and have grown so accustomed to it, that I'm really reluctant to use anything else. So, any photos will have to wait until they are back up again.

A quick note about the birding...
Yesterday morning, Pam and I joined Paul & Diana(and about 10-11 other birders, for a Brookline Bird Club(BBC)/Menotomy Bird Club(MBC)/Woburn Residents Environmental Network(WREN) walk to Horn Pond right around the corner from where we live. The day started cool, but warmed up relatively quickly - both temperatures and birding. We had some fall warblers to puzzle out, including Blackpolls, Black&White, Palm, Black-throated Green, and Common Yellowthroat - some nice sparrows including Lincoln's, Field, Chipping, Song, and Towhees - as well as a vocal Eastern Screech Owl that responded to Paul's, excellent imitation.
After a fantastic breakfast at Masa (excellent Saturday brunch menu at a price you can't beat!) we decided to head north (as we almost always do when we can't decide what else to do) to Plum Island. Birds there had been pretty active too, with lots of warblers and some interesting sparrows being reported (including two Lark Sparrows and a Clay-colored reported on Friday but not relocated Saturday). White-throated Sparrows have really arrived on the refuge - there was barely a spot on the refuge where you couldn't hear them scratching around in the leaf litter! It's an interesting time on the refuge, where we still have some of our "summer birds" like Great and Snowy Egrets, there are some Autumnal migrants around like the warblers that are coming through, some of the shorebirds that haven't quite left yet and the Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers, as well as some of the vanguard "winter birds" (for this area) including White-throated Sparrows and Dark-eyed Juncos. Other indicators of change are the conspicuously absent Tree Swallows, which staged here and left since the last time we were here. One of the highlights of our time there on Saturday were several Merlins that we saw.

Hopefully, pBase will be back soon, so that I'll have some photos to post, rather than hoping that you'll keep coming back for my writing (!?!)

OH - and lately I've been completely pre-occupied with the idea of going birding in Costa Rica. Not that I haven't been daydreaming about it since I started birding (and actually even before then) but it's become an all-encompassing desire lately. Pamela and I are starting to look at our options for early 2010. If you have gone there birding, and have any suggestions, I'd love to hear 'em!

Birding on the weekend...

...because weekday birding has become all but impossible these days.

Heck, it's taken me until now to actually even post about last weekend!
(note: I actually wanted to post this Wed night, but was waiting for pBase to be back on-line to post some photos. As of 9:45pm EST on Friday, it's still not available!)

On Saturday morning, we went birding with a little bit of a twist. Mark Lynch and Sheila Carroll led a birding trip at the Decordova Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA - birding AND contemporary art combined. Oh, and we also had a docent from the museum join us as well to talk about the art (in between the birds, of course).
Birds were a bit slow to start, as it was a pretty cool morning, but things started to look up when we heard a nearby Common Loon calling in flight. Over the next few hours we spent an enjoyable time discussing birds and art, culminating with a nice little mixed flock of warblers in the trees in the parking lot.

Sheila put together a great post with photos about the trip on here blog here.

Sunday morning we decided to bird locally, hitting spots like Dunback Meadows, where we had a nice "kettle" of migrating hawks which included Sharp-shinned, Broad-winged, and one Red-tailed Hawk, as well as a following Osprey. We then headed over to Belmont to explore Massachusetts Audubon's "Habitat" Sanctuary, which we amazingly had never visited before. It really is a very pretty sanctuary, and we only saw a small section of it. I look forward to visiting it again sometime soon - seems like a good place for migrants, dragonflies, etc. (See previous two posts for some photos I took there.)

Wordless Wednesday 9/23/09

As always, click on the photo to see a larger, more detailed image.




Get Wordless over at Wordless Wednesday

Bird Photography Weekly #56

Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata)

A common enough bird here in the US (especially in New England), I had just been commenting to my wife on the fact that I'd never managed to get a photo of a Blue Jay that I liked. Moments later, she says, "Well, there's one on the ground right there" and sure enough, there was a beautiful adult Blue Jay on the ground not 20 feet from us. The moment I grabbed my camera, and turned the lens in it's direction, it did something I didn't quite expect. It spread out it's right wing and nestled down in the grass. Odd! My first thought was that this was a "broken-wing" display that I've seen Killdeer use to distract predators away from a nest, but I'd never seen a Blue Jay do it. I shot a few photos, took a step closer, took another few, took another step, knelt down, and still the bird did not move - just looked at me with it's beak wide open. Now I was starting to get nervous that perhaps the bird really was injured and I started to think about where I could bring it, and as I straightened up from my crouching photographer position - it stood up as well - I swear it winked at me, then turned and flew off - with two other jays that had been above our heads the entire time. This bird had totally played me and I fell for it!

Before I left, I did check to make sure they didn't take my wallet. Sneaky little corvids - I wouldn't put it past them!


To see some great bird photos from around the world, check out: