Bird Photography Weekly #11

Barred Owl

To see more bird photos, check out:

Snowy Owls on Plum Island

I don't have much time before I need to leave for work, but wanted to put up a quick post. Pamela and I headed up to Plum Island this morning as there have been two Snowy Owls seen at the southern tip of the island for the last week or so. They put on quite a show today, very visible hanging out on the flats at "stage Island Pool." The birds are clearly associating with each other, as they would always be in sight of each other and, more often than not, be within a few feet of each other.
Over a period of a few hours I took several hundred photos, both with the hi-zoom camera and digiscoping. It's hard to walk away from a show like that. On our way off the island, Pamela spotted a third SNOW in the tall marsh grass at the top of a sand dune. (I was told that there was another spotted earlier in the day in Salisbury - just north of Plum Island) Looks like it's going to be a really good year for Snowy Owls (fom a bird-watchers point of view, that is)

It's going to take me quite a bit of time to go through them all, but here are the first few that I looked at...

Gannets

The day started out overcast, and never really brightened up. We joined Bill Drummond for a BBC trip to Gloucester and Rockport. The 'best' bird of the day had to be a White-eyed Vireo.
I particularly enjoyed the Northern Gannet show, as hundreds of birds of various ages flew south past us in Rockport. A few even came kinda close for some photo ops. As I said it way pretty overcast so shutter-speeds were not at all what I would have liked for birds in flight.

Other highlights on the day included birds that herald the coming of winter birding in New England: Black Guillemots, Long-tailed Ducks, and Harlequin Ducks all are regulars on the ocean throughout the winter birding season.

Playing with page layout

Like most bloggers, I probably look at my blog at least once a day. Either checking to see how things fall on the page with new posts, using it as a starting point to check out other's blogs, etc.
After a while, it starts to look... well, boring. So I am trying out some new things. Little things - I have no intention of doing a major overhall here. I don't know much about hmtl or style sheets, so getting it to this point took a lot of research, and trial and error.
For the time being, I've added a background image to the post column and the sidebar.

Let me know if you like it or if you think this is too busy or distracting. I tried to make it subtle, but I've learned that different monitors (as well as individual users settings) can dramatically alter it.

Skywatch Friday 11/7/08

Fiery skies over Horn Pond in Woburn, Massachusetts.
Photos were taken on Saturday evening, Nov 1st 2008








For more, go to