Parc Omega, Belatedly
November 12th, 2018
At long last, I'm going to start posting my final batch of photos. Most of
what I have to share was taken in May of this year, but this first set goes
further back, to July of last year, when Michael and I visited
Parc Omega with my mom while she was
visiting. I'm not as enthusiastic about photographing confined creatures as
truly wild ones (though I do like that they have plenty of room to roam in
Parc Omega.) A certain intensity is missing when they no longer have to
struggle to survive (I'm thinking back here of the coyote at Stony Swamp who
looked like it was thinking, "I wonder if you're edible?"), and that lack
comes through in the photos. But I decided to give it my best shot, as it
were.
And I ended up with a few that I'm happy with. I particularly liked these
frolicking Alpine Ipex kids.
young Arctic Fox
Arctic Wolf
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Time For Goodbye
June 28th, 2018
I think the time has come for me to officially retire from nature blogging.
There are a number of reasons for this, most of which I won't go into. But a
big one is that Facebook Has Eaten The Internet. On the trail, I'll always get
more pleasure from enjoying a sighting in the moment, with binoculars, rather
than striving to capture it well on camera. But historically, what I got back
in the form of blog comments made it more than worth it to occasionally
dedicate an outing to photography. (I especially always loved hearing, "you
helped me see beauty that I never noticed before.") But comments have dwindled
to a trickle, for me and other nature bloggers.
At least one person I know has dealt with this by more or less abandoning her
blog and putting her pictures on Facebook. That's not for me. The whole
approach of social media (breadth over depth) runs completely counter to my
personality. And Facebook brutally resamples, i.e. compresses, i.e. ruins, any
photos posted there. (I'm surprised how few people seem to notice this.)
Anytime I've shared nature photos on Facebook, the difference between what I
put in and what its compression algorithm spits out is simply depressing.
So birding, for me, will go back to being a passionate but largely private
hobby. The exception being that I now submit nearly all of my observations to
eBird, as I've mentioned before.
My blog and gallery will continue to stay up indefinitely. There's some ten
years of material here that I'm proud of. I still see people finding me in the
site logs (usually through a Google image search), I still occasionally get
email from artists hoping to use one of my photos as a model, and, on very
rare occasions, I still hear from people who just plain stumbled across my
blog and loved what they saw. That last one always makes my day, not least
because it tells me that the corporate web has yet to completely defeat the
peoples' web.
I do have a few photos left to show from the past month and some, and a few
adventures to recount, so I'll do that in the next post. After that, I'm
thinking I might do a retrospective "best of", re-posting some of my personal
favorite photos and stories from over the years.
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Recent Birdventures
May 3rd, 2018
1. Holland's Marsh
On the 25th I heard simultaneously from Jon Ruddy and Ontbirds that there was
a rare Snowy Egret in a flooded field off Highway 17. I'd seen Snowy Egrets
galore in Cape Hatteras, but never close to home, and a new "Ottawa lifer" is
always worth chasing. Besides, I like Snowy Egrets! So I quickly looked up the
directions and headed out.
I understood "Highway 17" to be what the 417 becomes when you keep going west,
so was confused when the directions said to get off the highway at Kinburn,
then turn left onto the 17. It turns out there is a tiny, disconnected,
historical bit of Highway 17 near Kinburn. That's where the bird was. I saw it
as soon as I drove up, foraging close to the road! I rolled down my passenger
window to enjoy the view and the Ottawa-lifer.
Snowy Egrets look like half-sized Great Egrets (the large white herons that
are becoming an increasingly common sight around Ottawa.) They breed on the
south Atlantic coast, the Gulf coast, and parts of the western states. Once,
they were nearly driven to extinction by demand for their beautiful white
plumes (used to adorn ladies' hats.) Thankfully, the plume trade was stopped
in time and their population rebounded.
A few minutes after I arrived, Bob Cermak came over and knocked on my
driver-side window. "It's Sue, right? We just had a Ruff here about eight
minutes ago. Seriously!"
Snowy Egret is a rarity. Ruff is a mega-rarity, an
unusual species of sandpiper
whose expected range is northern Europe and Siberia in summer, southern
Europe, Africa and Asia in winter.
I got out and set my scope up, enjoying (and sharing, with one scopeless
fellow) beautiful close-ups of the egret. And occasionally looking for the
Ruff, though I wasn't at all convinced I'd know it when I found it. (I knew it
wasn't going to be the extravagantly-plumaged breeding male. They'd have said
so if it was. It was going to be a generic-looking brown sandpiper.) It was a
rainy day and pretty soon I and the scope were both drenched. The scope is
waterproof, me slightly less so, but the bird was worth it.
Then someone called out that he had the Ruff. Everyone got on it fast but me
(embarrassingly), but I finally did. Lifer! (No photos of this one, sorry. It
was extremely distant.) And a satisfying lifer. I was able to study it well,
picking out the subtle features (the very short bill, the pot belly, the
"floppy tertials") that had given away its identity to the sages.
Word got out fast and before long a couple dozen keen birders were with us,
almost all of them clustered with scopes watching the distant Ruff while the
Snowy Egret, some twenty feet away from us, putting on a beautiful show of
prancing and preening, catching fish, shaking its little legs to stir up prey,
languished in obscurity. (Not complete obscurity: I and a fellow photographer
continued to lavish attention on it.) It was kind of funny. I imagined someone
seeing this strange tableau and thinking,
"Bird watching:
you're doing it wrong."
I later found out that that spot is called "Holland's Marsh" in eBird...and
literally nowhere else. Google knows all about a "Holland Marsh", but that's a
region near Toronto, not a bit of flooded field near Ottawa. I don't get it,
but who am I to question the birders hive mind? "Holland's Marsh" it is. And
to Holland's Marsh I will return. (I gather it's considered a hotspot.)
2. Snake River Line
I was introduced to this great birding road thanks to one of Jon Ruddy's
tours. It's famous for Sandhill Cranes, but I've since learned that it's good
for a lot else, besides. It's a ways northwest from Ottawa, near Cobden, but
from where I live it's only an hour drive. My last two visits have turned up
seven different species of waterfowl, all hanging out in flooded fields, plus
Bald Eagles, Northern Harriers, Rusty Blackbirds, Wilson's Snipe...the list
goes on. The titular Snake River runs west of the road, surrounded by a large
marshland (which has been proposed as a conservation reserve.) That marsh is
probably why the birding is so rich, and why the fields flood.
From left to right: Female Blue-winged Teal, male Blue-winged Teal, male
Green-winged Teal
I gather Snake River Line is underbirded. Because eBird keeps raising its
eyebrows at me. 7 Greater Yellowlegs, really? 8 Northern Shoveler, really? 70
Northern Pintail, REALLY? Um, yes, really. I mean, it's not like these are
tricky birds to identify, and it's not like I started birding yesterday. It's
hard to get good photographic proof when most of the multitude are so far
away, and I don't have a digiscoping setup (i.e. a means to take photos
through my spotting scope.)
I'll be back. Next time I'm going to bring a playback device, so I can try to
coax the Soras and American Bittern (taunting me from within the marsh) into
showing themselves.
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An Easter Goose
April 3rd, 2018
The annual spring flood of Cobb's Lake Creek in Bourget is on, and as all
passionate birders must, I made the pilgrimage--on Easter Sunday, as it turns
out. When I saw all the white stuff up ahead and realized it wasn't snow, I
knew it was going to be good.
Ten thousand Snow Geese at a conservative estimate. But as I didn't get any
good photos of the masses, I'm borrowing a shot I took two years ago (same
spot, same time.)
The sight of them flying in skeins overhead, gleaming pearly white against
blue sky, was just amazing. And those did lend themselves to good photos. The
wind was fierce, it was only a couple degrees above zero, and the jacket I was
wearing wasn't really designed for such conditions, but I must have been in
love because I stayed out there for over an hour anyway.
Eventually I finished with my "wow"s and settled down with the scope for a
long scan. There were a bunch of them massed in a field across the road from
the flood, not too far away, so I focused on those. Snow Goose has a
dwarf-lookalike called the Ross's Goose, a cute Mallard-sized goose with a
stubby little bill. It's rare, but when you've got ten thousand Snow Geese in
one place, there's a good chance of at least one in there, somewhere...if you
can find it. It's always been a nemesis bird for me. And I've never understood
how people manage to scan a tight-packed flock of ten spabillion white geese
and pick out the one odd white goose.
I grumbled to myself about how impossible it was. Grumbled and mumbled right
up until the moment when I saw a tantalizingly petite white goose, with a
tantalizingly stubby bill, amidst the masses. I struggled to keep a lock on
it. It helped that it was in the vanguard of its little cluster as they ambled
left, and that a pair of Canada Geese (a small minority, for a change) were
nearby as a landmark. I took some hurried photos--so hurried that I forgot to
check my exposure and they came out overexposed and awful. But they were
enough. Jon Ruddy and other experts confirmed that I had my lifer Ross's
Goose!
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Early thaw, aborted
March 17th, 2018
For most of the winter, except for our brief jaunt to the southern states,
I've been hibernating indoors. I just don't tolerate Canadian winter as well
as I did when I was younger. A few weeks ago I thought the long cold wait was
over. And I wasn't the only one! On the 27th of February I tallied a
Red-winged Blackbird outside my husband's work, my earliest ever. On the 4th
of this month, we both drove out to the Carp River floodplain and enjoyed the
spectacle of a thousand plus Canada Geese, along with a handful of Cackling
Geese (Canada Goose's diminutive lookalike) and two
Greater
White-Fronted Geese. That last is an uncommon species in Ottawa, and I got
one of my best looks at it ever.
And then temperatures plummeted. And a whole bunch of snow fell. People have
reported seeing masses of geese fly south. I don't blame them.
But today my body said, "minus five or not, I want a walk." I'm glad I
listened. I spent a couple hours at South March Conservation Forest enjoying
the sun and the birds. Purple Finches sang along the trail, and Brown Creepers
and Downy Woodpeckers spiralled up tree trunks. As for the Red-winged
Blackbirds, they seem to have decided, "darnit, we're here now and we're NOT
turning around and going back." They were staked out over the frozen marsh,
conk-a-reeing away.
Tonight I'm putting both feeders up. I think my molting goldfinches will
appreciate the extra food after it hits -19C tonight.
Mourning Doves at feeder, November 21st
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In Love With Dutch Gap (part 3)
January 23rd, 2018
On the 27th Michael and I made one final outing to Dutch Gap, featuring three
exciting photographic firsts: three birds that I had either never photographed
before, or never photographed well. None of them were ducks, oddly enough!
The first was this beautiful little falcon, an American Kestrel:
While I've seen kestrels often enough, usually in rural areas, they always
seem to fly away before I can take a picture. I photographed this one from the
car and managed to get a few good shots in before he spooked.
For the second photographic first, I thank the very cold weather that day
(even colder than the last), which was slowing down the hyperactive kinglets.
This is the first photo I've ever gotten of a Golden-Crowned Kinglet that I'm
happy with. Though it may not look it in the close-up, this bird is even
tinier than the Ruby-Crowned Kinglet pictured in the previous post.
The third first involved the undisputed high point of our outing, a
magnificent Barred Owl. The photos don't do it justice, but they are my
first-ever showable photos of the species. (I only wish I'd had my camera with
me when I saw one of these beauties a few winters back in the Gatineau, almost
close enough to touch!)
Even though it is a common species, of the nine owls on my lifelist, Barred
is my favorite. I love its dark, brooding eyes and its
strange call.
American Coot
American Coot
Another things that gives coots away as non-ducks: their weird feet.
White-Throated Sparrow
There's something unusual about the White-Throated Sparrow. If you'd like to
know the story, read on.
(
Herein )
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In Love With Dutch Gap (part 2)
January 13th, 2018
On my second visit to Dutch Gap (the day after Christmas), it was the Gadwall
who came in close.
(female in front, two males behind)
"Understated elegance" is how AllAboutBirds describes them. I agree with that.
Gadwall drakes aren't flashy, but I find them handsome. I particularly like
those softly peach-tinted back feathers. When they take flight, they reveal
chestnut wing patches, and both sexes show striking white wing patches that
help identify them at a distance.
(female in front, male behind)
A tiny Ruby-Crowned Kinglet distracted me away from the ducks as it foraged in
the marshside vegetation. It was a cold morning (for Virginia), and cold
mornings are always the best time for viewing kinglets! (When it's warm enough
to get them up to speed, they move at approximately the speed of sound. At
least it feels that way when you're trying to photograph one.) Both species of
kinglets (Ruby-Crowned and Golden-Crowned) winter in Virginia and are a common
sight, even in suburban front yards, though likely unnoticed by non-birders.
They are some of the smallest birds in North America after hummingbirds.
Note in each of these photos the teeny glimpse of the hidden ruby crown,
identifying this as a male.
Ruby-Crowned Kinglet
Ruby-Crowned Kinglet
Ruby-Crowned Kinglet
(
More (Mockingbird, Brown Thrasher, Field Sparrow, Bald Eagle) )
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In Love With Dutch Gap (part 1)
January 11th, 2018
Michael and I spent a week in Virginia this Christmas, sharing the holidays
with my parents. And I managed three outings to Dutch Gap, each of them
wonderful in its own way.
Dutch Gap is a conservation area on the James River and one of my favorite
places in the world. A rather superlative statement, I know, especially for
someone who has birded Costa Rica, but Dutch Gap is special to me. In summer,
it's about the beautiful Prothonotary Warblers, brilliant golden birds who
nest in tree holes in wooded swamps. At Dutch Gap they nest in bird boxes
built especially for them, erected six feet or so above the water. You seem to
hear their song around every corner. And they are easy to see, at least until
you take your camera out.
But this time of year it's about the ducks. A diverse and abundant assortment
of them winter in the marshes of Dutch Gap, viewable right from the roadside.
They can sometimes become quite tame. My high counts this trip included, among
others, 40 American Wigeons, 100 Gadwall, 10 Northern Pintails, 40 Northern
Shovelers, and a whopping 160 Wood Ducks. (Those counts are all loose but
conservative, based on what I could see with binoculars and spotting scope
from the various overlooks. There were doubtless more!)
I guess ducks are some of my favorite birds. They have such character about
them. The gentle Gadwalls, the stern yet comical Ring-Necked Ducks, the
ungainly Shovelers. And for the first time I was able to capture them well. I
fell in love anew with each species as I was processing their photos.
My first outing, on the 23rd with Michael, had me in a sorry state. I was worn
out from travel and having difficulty adjusting to being away from home. But
the marshes lifted my spirits.
A Northern Shoveler dabbles for food with his oversized bill, while another
tips up. There were dozens of them swimming close in that day.
Northern Shovelers have comb-like structures called lamellae on the edges of
their oversized bills. As they dip their bills in the water, the lamellae
strain out tiny crustaceans and other food items.
I noticed a few of them doing something I'd never seen them do before. Two
ducks would slowly spin together while dabbling, creating a gentle vortex with
them at its center. It was reminiscent of
what phalaropes do, and
likely for the same purpose (to draw food items up to the surface), but the
shovelers preferred to do it in pairs. Visually they reminded me of a yin
yang.
Note the vortex around this fellow. I think this is one who was spinning by
himself.
The other stars of the day were the Ring-Necked Ducks. These diving ducks like
shallower water than their relatives, and often hang out with dabblers in
marshes and ponds, while the more dedicated divers keep to rivers, lakes and
ocean bays. I had struggled to do the shovelers justice in the overcast
lighting that day, but for the ring-neckeds it was no problem at all. They're
naturally monochrome.
(If you're wondering why these ducks are called "Ring-Necked" and not
"Ring-Billed", you're not the first. They do have a very subtle chestnut ring
around their necks, visible at close range--as in, to someone who is holding a
specimen in their hands. It is seldom seen by the rest of us.)
(
More (American Coot, squabbling gulls) )
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Life Bird #473
December 21st, 2017
(
Part 1)
The next day I tried again and hit gold. The Black-Throated Gray Warbler
appeared east of the ridge. Many birders that day enjoyed good views and, for
the camera-equipped, photo ops as it actively foraged in a stand of buckthorn.
Black-Throated Gray Warbler breeds in the west from Arizona and New Mexico, up
to the southwestern tip of British Columbia. It prefers pine and mixed
oak-pine forests. Like most warblers, it is a dedicated insectivore (although,
as suggested by its attraction to buckthorns at Mud Lake, it will also take
the occasional berry.) This bird is often considered part of a "superspecies"
with the closely related warblers Black-Throated Green (our local
representative), Townsend's, Hermit, and Golden-Cheeked. It is the least
colorful of the bunch (unsurprising for a southwest bird), but still has a
certain somber handsomeness about it and a little spot of color, especially on
the
breeding
adult male. The one in Ottawa was probably a young (first-year) bird.
Sadly, but not unexpectedly, this lost waif was not able to contend with an
Ottawa winter. It did surprisingly well for awhile, until the big snow
arrived. That morning, Bruce di Labio went to Mud Lake and found it lying
motionless at the base of a tree. He picked it up and cradled it in his hand
to try to warm it, but it was too late. A silver lining on the cloud is that
now the Royal Ontario Museum has a specimen for a very rare bird in our
region.
I find it interesting that the same man who found the warbler was the man who
was there to try to rescue it in its final moments. It was the same with the
Bullock's Oriole in Pakenham: Ray Holland found it, and Ray Holland was there
to rescue it when the winter turned harsh. (And for the oriole the ending was
happy: it was eventually released in British Columbia after convalescing at
the Wild Bird Care Centre.) Even though many, many people went to see both
birds, those men were there when it counted. It speaks to their dedication and
their skill as field-naturalists.
And now for more photographs from Mud Lake.
Wood Duck (female)
Wood Duck (male)
Northern Cardinal
Dark-Eyed Junco
Fox Sparrow
Fox Sparrows only appear in Ottawa in migration. This one was a little late
moving on to its wintering grounds (but much better able to deal with being
late than an insectivorous warbler.) It was in with a group of White-Throated
Sparrows and Dark-Eyed Juncos, all coming out to forage on birdseed that
someone had scattered on the trail. But it was much shyer than they, quickly
darting back undercover whenever a human got close. I've only managed a few
photos of this bashful sparrow (one of my favorites) over the years, and I
still haven't gotten one that I'm truly happy with.
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Catching Up
December 20th, 2017
It's time--long past time, really--for a catch-up post, before Michael and I
head to Virginia for Christmas vacation. (I'm going to be rambling a bit for
the next five paragraphs, so
click here if you prefer to
skip straight to the photos.)
Like last year, I've ramped down my nature photography for the cold season.
When I do manage to coax myself out into the Ottawa winter, my focus is on
seeking beauty and enjoying it in the moment (rather than taking myself out of
the moment to capture it), and getting enough exercise to stave off seasonal
affective. However, I made two trips out to Mud Lake in early November in
search of an ultra-rare Black-Throated Gray Warbler, and I brought the camera
both times. I'll share those photos in this post and the next.
And the camera will be going with me to Virginia. I very much look forward to
seeing the incredible array of wintering ducks at Dutch Gap, and maybe
capturing them. Chesterfield had t-shirt weather today. I can only hope it
will offer some of the same after our arrival! And I can only hope the trip
works out and lasts long enough to catch Virginia at its best. I have been
having major sensory processing issues, which more or less torched my last
attempt at travel (Point Pelee in May.) I'm tired of not travelling due to
these issues--as much as I love my home city, I'm tired of only seeing Ottawa
birds.
I'm
eBirding
these days. (That's a link to my eBird profile, but note that you have to be
registered on eBird to view it.) i.e. reporting the results of my birding
outings (and sometimes feeder watches) to the huge public database run by
Cornell. This is increasingly popular among birders, and increasingly being
used by scientists for tracking the distribution of species around the globe.
Relatedly, I've been working on a program for recording bird sightings locally
(i.e. on my own computer) and personally. It's sort of eaten my life, though
in a good way. I've enjoyed the coding, and finally, now, am enjoying the
fruits of it. The nucleus of the idea was my dissatisfaction with eBird's
query abilities and its impersonal nature. Although I'm not going to stop
eBirding, I wanted in addition something more like
Birder's Diary, but that runs natively in
Linux (my preferred platform.) I wanted to be able to easily ask, for
instance, "where have I seen Scarlet Tanager in June and July?" And I wanted a
platform for storing personal thoughts about my birding trips, not just dry
scientific data.
I now have all these things in BirdDB! It's a Perl library with a
terminal-based app running on top, and my next step will be a GUI app. I
haven't decided yet whether I will ever release any of it for public use. I
don't know how big of an intersection there is between the already small
groups "serious birders for whom eBird isn't enough", and "linux geeks." I
suspect not a big one. (Besides, there is actually already a birding program
that runs on linux. It's in Java. The truth is I made BirdDB more because I
really wanted an interesting programming project, than because there were no
existing alternatives.)
So a Black-Throated Gray Warbler showed up in Ottawa, our second ever. It is a
bird primarily of the American southwest, though its range does tip up into
southernmost British Columbia. It should have flown to Mexico in fall,
instead, somehow, it ended up here. It was first found on the second of
November at Mud Lake, and ended up lingering there until mid-December, when
winter came in with a vengeance.
The afternoon of the day it was first reported, a rainy afternoon, I went to
Mud Lake and soaked myself and my optics to the bone looking for it. No dice.
I settled for photographing common birds, and promised myself I would be back
the next day to try again.
Note: Husband and I finally got a new 1920x1080 monitor, so that's the res I
use for wallpapers now. Click through to the gallery for wallpaper links for
the first and third of these.
Downy Woodpecker
Northern Cardinal
Black-Capped Chickadee
(Continued in next post.)
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