Red Knot Portrait

Red Knot @ Slaughter Beach

Red Knot Portrait

I used my photograph of the Red Knot (above) to produce the Red Knot portrait that appears here. These kinds of portraits are not really photographs, though they are often derived from them.   

Some Coastal Birding

Willet @ Slaughter Beach

Short-billed Dowitcher @ Slaughter Beach

Dunlin Along Fowler Beach Road

Red Knot @ Slaughter Beach

Ruddy Turnstone @ Slaughter Beach

Seaside Sparrow along Lighthouse Road

Green Heron Along The Burton Island Trail, Delaware Seashore State Park

Last weekend, I was in Delaware, between the Indian River Inlet and the Woodland Beach Wildlife Management Area, looking for opportunities to photograph migrating shorebirds. Venues I visited included Bombay Hook NWR, the Burton Island Trail in the Delaware Seashore State Park, Lighthouse Road, Oyster Rocks Road, Port Mahon Road, Mispillion Nature Center, Prime Hook NWR, Slaughter Beach, and the Woodland Beach Wildlife Management Area. Horseshoe crabs were laying eggs on the Delaware beaches, and, of course, migrating shorebirds were foraging for them.

Highlights included:

Walking a piece of the newly opened Burton Island Trail at the Delaware State Seashore Park; hearing a Willow Flycatcher vocalizing at Bombay Hook, watching a female Indigo Bunting gathering nesting material along Deep Branch Road while trying to photograph a Grasshopper Sparrow, meeting a photographer I know from Philadelphia who had his young grandson on Port Mahon Road photographing shorebirds, watching horseshoe crabs spawning on Delaware Bay beaches, photographing Red Knots on Slaughter Beach and discussing the conservation status of this species with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wildlife biologists who are banding Red Knot and Ruddy Turnstone there, seeing and then trying without much success to photograph Clapper Rail on Lighthouse Road, and finding a group of twenty plus Black Skimmers along Fowler Beach Road at dusk.

Other birds I saw and/or heard included: Snowy Egret, Black-crowned Night Heron, Glossy Ibis, American Black Duck, Osprey, Bald Eagle, American Kestrel, Wild Turkey, Northern Bobwhite, Black-bellied Plover, Semipalmated Plover, Killdeer, Black-necked Stilt, Greater Yellowlegs, Lesser Yellowlegs, Spotted Sandpiper, Semipalmated Sandpiper, Least Sandpiper, Royal Tern, Forster's Tern, Eastern Screech Owl, Great Horned Owl, Acadian Flycatcher, Great Crested Flycatcher, White-eyed Vireo, Purple Martin, Bank Swallow, Marsh Wren, Blue-grey Gnatcatcher, Brown Thrasher, Yellow Warbler, Pine Warbler, Prairie Warbler, Blackpoll, American Redstart, Worm-eating Warbler, Scarlet Tanager, Chipping Sparrow, Field Sparrow, Grasshopper Sparrow, Swamp Sparrow, White-crowned Sparrow, Blue Grosbeak, Eastern Meadowlark, Orchard Oriole, and Eastern Meadowlark.

More Prime Hook NWR

Dunlin 

Short-billed Dowitcher

A couple more photographs from Fowler Beach Road

Prime Hook NWR

Lesser Yellowlegs

Black-necked Stilt

Willet

Short-billed Dowitcher

Dunlin

I was at Prime Hook NWR this past Sunday with my new 500 mm telephoto lens. Water levels were very high, but I managed to see some nice birds, including: Snowy Egret, Cattle Egret, Black-crowned Night Heron, Snow Goose, Gadwall, American Black Duck, Ruddy Duck (breeding plumage), Bald Eagle, American Kestrel, Clapper Rail, Black-bellied Plover, Black-necked Stilt, Willet, Solitary Sandpiper, Spotted Sandpiper, Ruddy Turnstone, Semipalmated Sandpiper, Least Sandpiper, Dunlin, Short-billed Dowitcher, Forster's tern, and Eastern Screech Owl (red-phase).

Highlights included watching Black-necked Stilts and Willets copulating.         

Bald Eagle Composite

For better or worse, when processing this capture, I used a mask to apply a "fog" to this photograph. Applying these kinds of special effects to a photo makes a capture more of a composite than an actual nature photo.

Some nature photographers avoid "composites" altogether. I'm just learning to use them. This composite is supposed to reflect an immature Bald Eagle flying in a fog bank. The original capture was obtained at Conowingo Dam on a sunny day.   

North Tract, Patuxent NWR

Scarlet Tanager, May 08?

Is the Tanager pictured above a Female Summer Tanager, or instead, is this bird a Scarlet Tanager? Last spring, when I got this "capture" at the North Tract of the Patuxent NWR, I thought I was photographing a Summer Tanager, though I was less certain of the identification once I looked at this photograph on my computer screen. Eventually, I came to the conclusion, that this bird is most likely a Scarlet Tanager, not a Summer Tanager.

Yesterday, I was at the North Tract for most of the day. I bumped into a couple of veteran Baltimore birders I know. We talked a bit about birds we were seeing in various areas of the refuge, and at one point, John told me that Kevin was "keeping the list." LOL!

These birders were talking to me about birds they were seeing in terms of the number of species that had been recorded for the day. I was speaking some other, more intimate, birding language that had absolutely nothing to do with the number of species I was seeing at the refuge. My birding acquaintances were taking about species that had been found and "ticked off," as if birding is not much more than some kind of treasure hunt, while I was talking about birding moments and memories, about the sounds I was hearing, about things I was seeing and learning with absolutely no regard for the number of species I was seeing. 

These birders needed Kentucky Warbler for their trip list, so they wanted to know where at the refuge I had seen this species. "What about Warbling Vireo," I was asked. Just before going our separate ways, the three of us had an opportunity to look at a Ruby-throated Hummingbird and an Orchard Oriole. Once these species were "ticked off," the Baltimore birders were on their way. As we said goodbye, John told me that "Kevin gets antsy if we stay in one spot to long." Watching these birders drive off, I couldn't help but think that "lingering" with a bird is what birding is really all about.

In Good Birders Don't Wear White, John Sill, in a short essay entitled Linger Even After You've Listed A Bird, reminds veteran birders to take the time to sit with the birds they are listing. That veteran birders should even have to be reminded to do this is more proof, so far as I am concerned, that listing has unwisely come to define this modern birding era in some pretty unseemly ways.

Sill discusses his transition from bird watching to birding this way. "We soon became aware of a new emphasis in bird watching: the list. We both knew the birds we had seen, but now everyone was counting theirs. And former bird watchers had now become birders."

At the time, Sill believed that to be considered a credible birder he needed at least four-hundred species on his North American list. So, over time, Sill reports that he and his wife went "from simply watching birds to checking them off our lists." In many ways, the American Birding Association is responsible for peddling this and other birding buffoonery in ways that have clearly had some unintended consequences for the larger birding community.

To begin with, using a life list to sort out mere bird watchers from true birders is a fool's errand of the highest order. That so many veteran birders have been schooled to believe this nonsense is both proof that "listing" has come to define this modern birding era in an unseemly way and an indictment of our larger community.

And, the notion that we somehow become more credible birders as our life list grows is simply untrue, especially when "listing" begins to get in the way of the time required to really study the birds that we claim to be seeing and or hearing. Sill refers to this process as sitting and soaking up a bird, something that he and his wife stopped doing as they began spending more time "listing" and less time actually bird watching.

Veteran birders should not be confused on this point. Spotting a bird is not the same thing as seeing one. Spotting a bird can happen in the blink of an eye, even when I have to work to locate it by sight or sound. How many species I manage to spot or hear is a function of my basic birding skills, my field craft, my level of effort, my patience, my good fortune, and even the weather, time of day, and time of year. Actually seeing a bird though can take more time than simply spotting one. 

I was birding for a lot of years before I understood this. At least I believed that I was birding. LOL! Today, I understand that I didn't really begin birding until I learned to linger with the birds I was "listing," until I learned to stop running all over creation to see how many species I could record in a day or a year, until I learned the value of slowing down to actually see and study the birds I thought that I had been looking at. This is why I eventually stopped "listing" altogether.

Today, I keep certain birding records, like early and late dates for species seen, but outside of of a legitimate citizen science construct, I have no desire to know how many species I manage to see whenever I am out birding, so I have absolutely no idea how many species I saw at the North Tract of the Patuxent NWR yesterday. 

I spent most of my time yesterday birding by ear. Here in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area, I don't know of a better venue than the North Tract of the Patuxent NWR for Summer Tanager, so I spent quite a bit of time yesterday trying to locate the Summer Tanagers that I was hearing throughout the day.

I found a couple of lingering winter residents, including Yellow-bellied Sapsucker and Northern Harrier. I helped another birder find a Worm-eating Warbler. I spent quite a while locating one of the Yellow-throated Vireos I was hearing along the refuge's Wildlife Loop. I watched a Barred Owl at a distance for some time. I spent some time birding Thrushes along Wild Turkey Way. I heard my first-of-season Acadian Flycatcher vocalizing.

Warblers I managed to see and/or hear included: Northern Parula, Yellow Warbler, Magnolia Warbler, Black-throated Blue Warbler, Pine Warbler, Prairie Warbler, Black-and White Warbler, American Redstart, Worm-eating Warbler, Ovenbird, Louisiana Waterthrush, Kentucky Warbler, Common Yellowthroat, Hooded Warbler, and Yellow-breasted Chat. Most of these Warblers are breeding at the refuge, and I spent a lot of time yesterday watching Hooded Warblers establishing territories, performing courtship displays, and in one instance, carrying nesting material.

Royal Tern

Trying For The Same Perch  

Last fall, along Port Mahon Road, I photographed this Royal Tern and Laughing Gull vying for the same perch. I just got around to processing this capture, which I put a "specialty" blur into.

I am not a real big fan of "specialty" blurs, though I do like the way that the blur in this photo works.