Holiday birds

Right around the winter holidays is a good time to go birding. The work pressures are low, the people are more friendly, traffic is manageable, the weather is still (relatively) warm, but the winter birds are already present!

Brant geese in an oil tanker fly-by at Breezy Point:


Flock of Purple Sandpipers at Barnegat Light:


Red-Tailed Hawk flies over at Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx:


Another Barnegat Light winter special: Ruddy Turnstone:




One of these things is not like the other! A Snow Goose hiding amongst the Canadas in Assupink Wildlife Management area, NJ:


Brigantine Wildlife refuge housed hundreds upon hundreds of Northern Pintail ducks:




Another Red-Tailed Hawk playing hard to get, at Brignatine:


Staten Island's Great Kills park hosts a flock of hard-to-find Horned Larks in the winter. Normally skittish, one individual was cooperative enough to let me take a few passable shots:




Decidedly not hard-to-find, this European Starling posed in the morning light near the Outerboro Bridge in Staten Island:


Not quite a holiday bird, but still a really good shot: this is a late Common Yellowthroat that I found in September at Jacob Riis Park, Queens:

Miami November Report 3

North Miami Beach:


Sanderling:


American Kestrel:


Great Blue Heron:


Looks a little bit like a Prada bag, doesn't it?




Little Blue Heron:


At the Gatorland presentation:




Airboat ride partner:




White Ibis:


First winter: Double Crested Cormorant:


Banana spider:

Gulp!

There is something thrilling in observing birds fish - activity that has to be very mundane and unexceptional from their point of view. I've collected in this post three sequences that my friends and I were able to capture last year. Because the images are animated, I've spaced them out, so scroll down after looking at each one to see more.


Great Blue Heron, Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, FL:











Herring Gull, Acadia Nation Park, ME:


(Herring Gull photos by Arvin Bulaong)









Great Cormorant, Liberty State Park, NJ:

Ice Storm

Hot off the press: pictures from last week's ice storm:

Miami November Report 2

Another Ft Lauderdale view:




Anhinga after a successful dive:


Not native to Florida, but shown at Gatorland anyway:


Key Biscayne is also overrun with vultures:


Quintessential "face that only a mother Turkey Vulture could love":


Tricolored Heron:


Ibises, egrets, herons, and cormorants of all types settling for the night's roost at Wakodahatchee Wetlands:


Also a Wakodahatchee Wetlands inhabitant:




Tricolored Heron trying to hide:


Those eyes! Burrowing Owl: