Security
September 30th, 2010
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Radiant Robin
September 28th, 2010
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Rainy day pictures
September 27th, 2010
Some photos that I took back when and didn't get around to posting.
Female Black-Throated Blue Warbler
Photographed in last year's fall migration. The field mark for a female Black-Throated Blue is subtle but a clincher: it's that little whitish spot on her wing. The male, of course, is all field mark!
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The monarch mimic. Real monarchs lack the two lines across the rear wings.
Lesser Yellowlegs
September 26th, 2010
A few pictures of the fall migrant Lesser Yellowlegs at Shirley's Bay last week. The tameness of this species is such a pleasure for photographers.
Wow!
September 21st, 2010
Starting at 10:30 tonight, and continuing for about twenty minutes, multiple migrant flocks of killdeer passing over our apartment building, their calls--killydee, killydee, killydee--echoing in the night sky. Some of the flocks sounded huge!
I know people in rural areas hear this sort of thing all the time, but it's a pleasure I've never had here in our humble, five-minutes-from-downtown apartment.
The Egret Invasion
September 20th, 2010
The Great Egret is historically very rare in Ottawa. But as of this year there's been a surprising influx of them into our area. Over thirty have been sighted lately foraging and roosting at Shirley's Bay.
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They mingle freely with the more common Great Blue Herons, the two species often foraging right next to each other.
Swamp Sparrow
September 19th, 2010
Swamp Sparrows were abundant at Shirley's Bay yesterday morning--migrating through, perhaps. The bushes below the dike teemed with them, and they joined the shorebirds in foraging on the drier, weedy part of the mud flat.
PLOVER FIGHT!
September 18th, 2010
Have you ever played Adventure? If so, remember the reference to plover eggs? Did you, like me, assume that there was really no such thing as a plover's egg, and that you'd find out later in the game what sort of fantastical creature a plover was supposed to be (but you never did)?
Well, they exist. They're shorebirds related to sandpipers. Their primary field mark is that they are cute. Okay, I lie. Their primary field marks are their comparatively short, stout bills (as opposed to sandpipers' long, thin ones), and their habit of running in short starts and stops. But the cuteness definitely takes third place. Our breeding plover is the Killdeer, which you've heard me describe before, if you've been following along. In spring and fall a small variety of others move through in migration.
I photographed this pair of Black-Bellied Plovers at Shirley's Bay this morning. It seems one of them intruded into the other's personal space one time too many.
Sunshine
September 14th, 2010
A Single Candle
September 13th, 2010
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