10 Species
Geek Alert – I’m going to talk about birding – and photography – a LOT.
The other day, I was looking at some contacts’ shots on Flickr when I came across some great shots of Harlequin Ducks, something that I had never seen but was greatly impressed by. The photographer said that he had seen them down at Barnegat Lighthouse, which was relatively close to me and told me where to look. I got a wild hair and asked the wife if she was interested. She said, what the hell, let’s take the dogs and go see what there was to see. The appreciation I got later was overwhelming.
Shari has been loving her new Sigma 50-500mm ‘Bigma’ lens, but hasn’t really had a chance to really put it through its full paces. Well, she got to yesterday, and I was doing the same with my Nikon VR 80-400mm. That, in and of itself, would have probably been enough – but what we saw and what we got to photograph made this one of the best birding days in recent memory.
We started the day by waking up early to catch the dawn at Barnegat Lighthouse and then thought we would head down to Edwin R. Forsythe NWR in Brigantine, NJ. Turns out that it was a great choice as we got a bunch of new species added to our lists AND we got some amazing photographs. The lists (blue equals a new species):
Barnegat Lighthouse
- Brant – 100+
- Common Eider – 12+
- Common Loon – 5
- Dunlin – 30+
- Harlequin Ducks – 100+
- House Finch – 1 male
- Purple Sandpiper – 25+
- Oldsquaw/Long-tailed Ducks – 50+
- Red-breasted Merganser – 12+ (12M + 2F)
- Red Knot – 1
- Ruddy Turnstones – 20
- Sanderling – 2+
- Black Scoter – 3 (2M + 1F)
- Surf Scoter – 100+
- White-winged Scoter – 2 (1M + 1F)
- Snow Bunting – 25+ flock
- Yellow-rumped Warbler – 4
- Herring, Laughing, Ring-Billed Gulls – 1 million
Forsythe NWR
- American Coot – 7
- American Goldfinch – 3
- American Kestrel – 2
- American Robin – 5
- Black Duck – 25+
- Brant – 100+
- Canada Geese – 50+
- Cooper’s Hawk – 1 (immature)
- Gadwall – 4 (2M + 2F)
- Great Blue Heron – 2
- Mallard – 50+
- Mute Swan – 4
- Northern Harrier – 2 (1 adult, 1 immature)
- Northern Pintail – 250+
- Northern Shoveler – 30
- “Ipswich” Savannah Sparrow – 6
- Sharp-shinned Hawk – 1
- Swamp Sparrow – 1
- Snow Geese – 500+
- Unidentified Peeps – 250+
- Herring, Laughing, Ring-Billed Gulls – 100+
All in all, a fantastic day of birding, with 10 new species identified (total now = 241) and a whole lot of new additions to my photo lifebook. You can also see the whole set (increasing daily as I have a chance to convert from RAW to .jpg).
And be sure to check out some of Shari’s pix, too – she got some great ones.
And now for something completely different… »
- Newsvine – Collectors Go Bananas for Flawed $20 Bill
- Great Adobe Camera RAW tutorial
- Adobe Lightroom – to paraphrase Veruca Salt, “I want it nooooowww!“
