Winter Wren

Out yesterday with Brian doing a section of the Christmas Bird Count. This little Winter Wren was quite vocal.

Our cats......

Our cats are so poor they have to live in a shoe box.

Rascal

Oliver

Nutkin

Goldeneye

Rascal has really pretty golden eyes and she's so soft, the best little roller in the house.

Rascal

While recovering from a stinking cold I did a bit of photography out of the window overlooking the bird feeder. These pair were regular visitors to my homemade bird cake concoction. Peanut butter, lard, corn meal, peanuts, mixed bird seed, nyger seed and dried mealworms. They appear to like it.

Downy Woodpecker

Red-bellied Woodpecker

I got set up this morning to take some bird photographs out of the window. The light was superb but the birds didn't get the message. I gave up after an hour of nothing. Later this afternoon there was a fair bit of activity. 

Brown Creeper

Chickadee Sp.

One from yesterday up on the mountain.

Cold afternoon up on the mountain.

As Hawkwatch season is coming to an end I popped up to have last fling to see what I might see.  Certainly not a lot in the way of raptors. A few Black Vultures and an immature Bald Eagle and an adult Bald Eagle going the wrong way. There was lots of activity on the sun flower seed on the tree stump however.

Female Dark-eyed Junco

One from last year in Maine

Regular readers (all 3 of you) will know we love Maine, particularly Acadia National Park. Heres one from last year of Ravens Nest on the Schoodic Peninsula looking towards the main park on Mt Desert Island.

Ravens Nest

White-breasted Nuthatch

Now it's stopped raining after yesterdays downpour I can take a few bird pictures in the yard.

White-breasted Nuthatch

Sunday Pot Pouri

Sunday morning I was up bright and early for the 1 1/4 hour drive down to Conowingo Dam to photograph the Eagles. I got there about 1/2 hour before the actual sunrise which is when I wanted to arrive. The water was very high and flowing through like the proverbial steam train. I suppose it was too be expected after all the rain and snow we've had, not to mention the 1-2 inches we got last night. OK then. This doesn't look promising, I thought. I took a few shots of the sunrise and a shot of an eagle roosting in a tree. I got chatting to Doug and Geoff a couple of regulars, they said it was dire and has been for a few weeks. It was pretty chilly, colder than a witches tit just waiting for the eagle action that never came. OK then. Plan B. I decided to head to Pinacle Overlook further up the Susquehanna. On the way there I stopped at Muddy Run Reservoir to see if there was anything worth photographing. A White-tailed Doe was quite obliging and didn't mind me one bit. Onward to Pinacle Overlook which was quite misty. So a bit of this and a bit of that. 

Conowingo Sunrise

Conowingo Sunrise with Eagle

Conowingo Eagle (2 of them)

White-tail Doe at Muddy Run

Pinacle Overlook on the Susquehanna

Thanksgiving

Some photos's I took on a walk out to Memorial Lake on Tuesday morning. It was a bit breezy and  overcast and not many birds but I enjoyed it.

Maple

Maple Leaves

Memorial Lake

Memorial Lake

Memorial Lake

Memorial Lake

Sunday Morning, it's freezing

Nice bright Sunday morning and the high winds of yesterday have died down. I had a dead 100ft high Red Oak taken down on Wednesday and I'm really glad it's no longer a threat to the house. I have some videos but for some reason Blogger is acting up and I can't upload them.

Anyway, there was a frost last night, it was down to 29f this morning. My Pineapple Sage survived it and as I'm pretty sure  I saw a Hummingbird yesterday it might come back. This time of year they are usually the rarer varieties. My ground feeder is high with Black Oil Sun flower seeds as there have been several reports of Evening Grosbeak. I dearly want an Evening Grosbeak.

I'm going out later to pot some bare root American Chestnut trees which I got on Tuesday. I'm not going to plant them until the spring as I've ran out of tree tubes to protect them. I also got a Crabapple which will hopefully provide fruit in a few years for the deer.

Here's a picture of a Dunlin from earlier this year at Barnegat Lighthouse.

Dunlin

Fall Colors

Not a classic fall for colors as it's been so wet. Theres a few nice trees but the majority just ditched their leaves before they turned. Heres one from Memorial Lake this morning.

Memorial Lake

Memorial Lake

Rascal always has Fall Colors.

Rascal

Image Manipulation

I've mentioned before that I'm not averse to a bit of image manipulation, quite the opposite, I love it. I'm not a very patient photographer, I'm not one that suffers for my craft, by that I mean I'm not in the field 18 hours a day from dawn to dusk in extremes of temperatures and ridiculous humidities to get the perfect shot. My methodology is get the shot that's presented to you at the time and place thats suits your current situation. This means of course that you don't get the best light or conditions required to make the images that you would like. Most photographers know that the best light ( it's all about light after all) is early morning or late evening, the Golden Hours. Sometimes I can get up and get out early but not often for various reasons. This is where photo editing can help. There are photographic Amish types who shun any form of image manipulation, SOOC is their religion (Straight Out Of Camera). Poor deluded puritan fools, the camera itself is doing its best to display a pleasing image by carrying out all sorts of in-camera edits. The Pagan types like me love the various photo editing programs.

To illustrate my thoughts here's a picture of a Red-Shouldered Hawk taken back in March 2009 at Corkscrew Swamp in Florida. Corkscrew has a superb raised walkway through the Cypress Swamp with huge of trees covered in moss and lichens. As we were walking round there was this Hawk just sitting there watching us.  I took a few hasty shots then realized the lighting was awful so delved into my backpack and fitted my flash. The first image is the result, I've done a bit of tweaking in Capture One my favorite editing package but not too much. The problem with this image is the background, I could have used a smaller f stop than the f/8 I used, this would have blurred the background a bit. The hawk is nice but your eye is drawn to the background not the bird itself. This is where image manipulation can help.

Red-shouldered Hawk

The second image was given the same Capture One edits then exported to an old version of Photoshop. In Photoshop I used the selection tools to cut out the Red-shoulder and the branch it was sitting on, from there I copied the selection to another layer and blurred the background underneath. Probably took me 5 minutes work sitting at my desk drinking a cup of tea. Makes a better picture in my opinion. Of course I could have waited for hours for the Hawk to move to a more suitable perch, but then I wouldn't have seen the Little Blue Heron.

Red-shouldered Hawk

Little Blue Heron

Serpentine Encounter

After a nice lunch with Kelly in Hershey I decided to head up to the Hawkwatch as it was nice and sunny with a North Westerly wind which is normally pretty good up there. On the way up the mountain I saw what I thought was a dead snake in the road but I thought I'd stop and check it out. It was very much alive, just sunbathing in the middle of the road, dumb snake. I went back and got my camera and hastily took a few shots as I was sure someone would come along and drive over it. As it was nobody came along even though I was prepared to jump out and halt them but I got a long stick and shooed it off the road after talking a few shots of course.

Black Rat Snake

Black Rat Snake 

Black Rat Snake

Old Photo's

As I haven't ventured outside yet I've been looking at photo's from our trip out to the SW this spring. Heres one I like of an early morning start on the way to Death Valley.

Desert Flowers

Wet and Windy

Wind I can tolerate when I'm out, in a lot of cases I welcome it, seawatching, or hawkwatching or just sitting on a headland such as Schoodic Point watching the waves breaking. Wet I can also tolerate if it's not too cold and I'm wearing appropriate gear. Wet AND Windy you can keep it. Screw that for a lark. Instead of heading out and taking a few pictures I decided to stay inside and torment the cats with my new bounce flash thingy.

Badger was very impressed

Pumpkin telling me to piss off and go flash Bluey

Rascal was not impressed with my bounce flash thingy.

Catnip OD

Rascal was hanging out at the front door while I was taking the trash out, it being Thursday and trash night. There are some Catnip plants growing by the front door and I usually bring her a bit of greenery to chew on. Tonight Oliver, Willow and Rascal were all there wanting a leaf or two. Willow I think had a Catnip overdose. Apart from leaping on Oliver several times even though he's twice her size, she's been running around in a bout of kitty rips.

Willow on Catnip

Harvesting

Yesterday they started harvesting the corn with a spanking yellow New Holland Combine. Theres a fair bit of corn left over for the geese to feed on during the winter.

Better view now.

Corn

Moose

Moose had a tooth extraction last week and had some blood taken prior to the anesthesia. They shaved his neck to find a vein and I think the shaver nicked his whiskers a little. He also had his legs shaved and he now looks like a Poodle. He's a lot happier without his bad tooth.

Moose

The Sea, Ocean, Pond whatever ......Day 2

Wednesday morning was an earlyish start to get out to the Higbee Beach Observation Tower for the Morning Flight of migrant birds.

The weather was hot and humid even at 7am and the mossies were quite active. Unlike the bities at home which make a high pitched zzzzzzzzzzzz these little bastards were in stealth mode. You don't know you've been relieved of several pints until you feel the itch.

The morning flight was a bit slow with very low numbers, the highlight being a Clay-colored Sparrow which kept popping up from time to time. There was a brief look at a Yellow-billed Cuckoo and a few Indigo Buntings.

Clay-colored Sparrow and Indigo Bunting

Clay-colored Sparrow

Clay-colored Sparrow

Forty Three years ago this month we went on the Cape May NJ to Lewes Delaware ferry and I remember seeing quite a few sea birds. What I remember most was the Bacon Sandwiches that they made on the boat, I had a nice cup of tea and 2 bacon butties way back then. Nowadays due to insurance reasons they only serve pre-packaged plastic imitations of the real thing. Damn! I was so looking forward to a nice bacon sarnie.

Not many sea birds to speak of, several Great Black-backed Gulls, Scoter and assorted other gulls. I did find one Parasitic Jaeger (Pomerine Skua) which flew and I managed a few distant shots. Pulling into Lewes the Herring Gulls were following the boat for discarded bacon sandwiches.

Parasitic Jaeger

Parasitic Jaeger

Herring Gull

After leaving Lewes I headed back home stopping at Bombay Hook. It was miserably hot so I didn't stay long. Lots of shorebirds,  Dunlin, Dowitchers, both Yellow Legs, Pectoral, Semi-P, Least and several long distance Marbled Godwits with a possible Hudsonian but too far to tell.

American Avocets along with the odd Godwit 

The Sea, Ocean, Pond whatever..... Day 1

I needed to smell the sea air so I took myself off for a couple of days out to Cape May. I left at 5am on Tuesday and missed the worst of the Philadelphia early morning traffic. I initially headed out to the Seawatch at Avalon. Huge flights of Cormorants, lots of Black and Surf Scoter, a few Gannets and Royal and Caspian Terns. 

Surf Scoter

When I reached Cape May I drove along Beach Avenue to find the Skimmers and Terns on the beach.  I found several mixed groups, got my feet wet from walking too close to the incoming waves.

Royal Tern

Royal Tern

Forsters Tern

Juvenile Black Skimmer

Skimmers and Laughing Gulls

Very hard to get a Skimmer on it's own to get an isolated shot. I didn't want to disturb them so screw it, here's a group shot.

After an hour or so I headed down to the Cape May Lighthouse and the Hawkwatch Platform.

It was a lot hotter than the forecasted 72f, that combined with the dew point made it feel like the 90's. Made me wish I had worn shorts and not jeans.

Loads of Peregrines coming through, they had 111 for the day. Merlin, Kestrel, Bald Eagle, Broadwings, Red-tails, Harrier's pretty much everything except for Red-shouldered. I went for a walk along the trails to get out of the sun and ran into a flock of Turkey.

Mockingbird

Turkey's

A final walk along the beach at dusk and I took a shot of the lighthouse in the distance.

Cape May Lighthouse