Author Archives: Richard

Peregrine Falcons — The Outside Story

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When asked to name the fastest animal on earth, many people will respond “cheetah.” But it is the peregrine falcon – a cliff-dwelling raptor –that holds that title with the ability to reach speeds of 200+ MPH as they stoop (dive) in flight. (The cheetah tops out at a mere 70 MPH).
Equally remarkable is the fact that this speed demon of the skies was nearly wiped out 50 years ago; its recovery ranks among the great success stories of conservation biology and endangered species management.
Historically, the eastern peregrine falcon population was centered in New England and the Adirondack Mountains, ranging south along the spine of the Appalachians to western Georgia. In 1940,the population was estimated at 350 pairs; by the mid-1960s, the species was completely gone from the region, a victim of the devastating pesticide DDT…..
Read the complete article by Steven D. Faccio from The Adirondack Almanac
Photo credit   USFWS Headquarters

Stock up on Niger Seed, the Siskin Boys (& Girls) are in town

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We take in our feeders at night to avoid bear and raccoon problems.  Early yesterday morning, I hung up the bird feeder and thistle feeder and immediately had a dozen Pine Siskins flitting about, waiting for me to leave.  The same thing has happened all week — we have an onslaught of Siskins — as do other parts of New England in reading the eBird reports and list serves.


Pine Siskins are fun to watch but rather drab, after months of American Goldfinch watching.  

Here’s what the Cornell Lab of Ornithology says about them:

This nomadic finch ranges widely and erratically across the continent each winter in response to seed crops. Better suited to clinging to branch tips than to hopping along the ground, these brown-streaked acrobats flash yellow wing markings as they flutter while feeding or as they explode into flight. Flocks are gregarious, and you may hear their insistent wheezy twitters before you see them.

A Canadian ornithologist, Ron Pittaway, each year issues a  Winter Finch Forecast.  He notes that there is a “widespread tree seed crop failure in the Northeast” this year.  We may have a lot of visitors this winter — we’re already seeing a lot of Purple Finches and Dark-eyed Juncos.

This is the first winter in the last four that we are staying in Vermont — might be a good one for winter avian visitors.  My feed store friends are going to love me.  

Birds in Hiding

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One of the challenges for me in taking photos of birds is getting them in focus — whether it be in a breeze with the camera moving or the autofocus zeroing in and out on a branch instead of the bird.  Birding in New England (or essentially anywhere) means stalks, branches, vines, leaves are often between you and the bird.  It’s often a challenge with binoculars or a scope but usually manageable — the bird hops up for a few seconds and you at least get a good look.  Whether you can grab a photo is another thing.


I had a situation yesterday where a Grey Catbird was deep in a grapevine.  I could see him grabbing a grape and eating it but the camera auto-focus was jumping all around.  (I know, switch to MF but I had a dog on leash “helping” me.)  So I fired off a burst and the image below is the result:  not in great focus but it captures for me the grape-eating catbird that was entertaining me.

A furtive Grey Catbird hides out in a tangle of grapevines.

I’ve gone through some of my shots from this Fall and picked a few “I’m hiding” shots that are below.  Notice, aside from the Common Yellowthroat, there are no warblers.  That’s next year’s project.

White-throated Sparrows are rather cooperative, sitting still and just watching.

Likewise, Song Sparrows can give you a decent opportunity for photos.

Common Yellowthroats bounce around a lot in the underbrush, chipping away.

And they are often very buried in the bushes — you get glimpses but manual focus helps.

One of the nice things about digital photography is that you can rather easily, on a damp fall evening with the wood fire going, revisit some of the neat birds you saw during the spring and summer.  So some of the shots are a little blurred, you still can enjoy seeing once again some of the birds that are now thousands of miles south of here, and look forward to spring migration.

September Birds

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September was a great birding month — I got out quite a bit in wonderful Fall weather and got six species for my life list — and missed several more.

It was also a month where I struggled with digiscoping, starting off with my big Canon 60D with a 50mm lens and remote shutter control but found it very bulky and shaky.  I switched back to my little SD4000 point and shoot and tried shooting in bursts.  Here are some results — not quite ready for primetime.  They do capture for me some of the places and birds I ran into in MA and VT.

A gaggle of Great Egrets, Snowy Egrets, and a few juvenile Little Blue Herons at Parker River WNR

A flock of Greater Yellowlegs flew in while I was walking the Hellcat Dike at Parker River.

A juvenile Least Tern which was raised on the beach at Sandy Point SP on Plum Island, MA

Semi-palmated Sandpipers huddled up in the wind at Sandy Point.

A Wood Duck at Berlin Pond, VT.  Morning light always makes shooting a challenge.

Female Black Duck at Berlin Pond

Duck, Geese — Hunting Season is Near

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I have been reading Julie Zickfoose’s fine book, The Bluebird Effect.  It’s a series of stories about bird rehabilitation and observation and is the kind of book that is nice to take your time reading.  I have it on the iPad and read a chapter or two a week.  Her chapter “Love and Death among the Cranes” brought back some memories from last year and raised some issues on hunting and birding.

Last year, we travelled to the Southwest with our Airstream trailer.  We were planning to come down I-81 and when I heard of a rare Hooded Crane hanging out with the Sandhill Cranes at the Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge in Tennessee.  I blogged about it — we saw hundreds of cranes and a Ross’s Goose but the Hooded Crane was not around while we were there.  What I did see was Sandhill Cranes in fields everywhere and learned that Tennessee was considering opening up a hunting season for them.  (They delayed the decision for a couple of years.)

Julie writes passionately about the controversy in her book and on her blog.  I’m not anti-hunting but do have issues with the shooting of majestic birds like Sandhill Cranes and Snow Geese.  And now, our local little pond, a quiet water supply for Vermont’s capitol city, is not only now opened for non-motorized boating but also probably duck and geese hunting.  Hundreds of birders are angry, worried, depressed, feeling helpless, or all of the above.  It makes me wonder why I have a duck stamp on my binoculars.

The storyline goes like this:  Birders and other frequenters of National Wildlife Refuges should purchase a $15 Federal Duck Stamp each year in order to gain free admission to refuges. Conservationists buy Federal Duck Stamps because they know that the stamps are, dollar for dollar, one of the best investments one can make in the future of America’s wetlands. For every dollar you spend on Federal Duck Stamps, ninety-eight cents goes directly to purchase vital habitat for protection in the National Wildlife Refuge System.

So, every year, I buy a duck stamp at the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge (even though I have a life-long Senior Pass) and put it prominently on my binoculars.  The word is that the majority of stamps are bought by non-hunters but even if that is the case, we get little or no credit in surveys.

Here’s how blogger Mike puts it:   When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service puts together the National Survey, it ascribes zero dollars of Duck Stamp purchases to wildlife watchers. Zero. If you can find the statement in the National Survey that acknowledges that some of the Duck Stamp money comes from wildlife watchers, I’ll eat my beloved Midwest Birding Symposium hat (or more likely just some wild duck.) But that’s not going to happen.

So, when I go to Parker River or over to Lake Champlain and hear the guns booming just outside the refuges, I’ll try to remember that money from licenses, shells, stamps, etc goes toward habitat and that hunters love birds as much as we do — with a nice bottle of wine on the side.

Quieter Woods

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Things are pretty quiet these days in our woods as I walk the dog on our trails — aside for some deer watching us nearly every walk and numerous red squirrels and chipmunks, the activity has died off as birds prepare for migration and winter.  The Chickadees are still chipping away and I watch them for visiting warblers honing in on their local knowledge.  Blue Jays are as raucous as ever and lately, Red-breasted Nuthatches have been calling away as they forage.

There are some spots along the way where I have seen Common Yellowthroats all summer.  They are still here but never sing and even chip less frequently.  I can tell where they are from the movement of the bushes where they hide and every so often, get a glimpse of one — as the shot below illustrates.

A Common Yellowthroat hiding in the bushes.

Song Sparrows are also still here but furtive in their movements.  They no longer sing from the top of bushes but we have a nice crop of juveniles getting fattened up for their trip south.  They tend to sit a little more cooperatively like this guy that I photographed a few days ago.

A young Song Sparrow

It has been interesting watching the American Goldfinches at the feeder.  Some have bright new plumage, others are pretty ratty looking as they molt.  All seem to be loading up with food and I expect that soon their boisterous arrivals and departures — a spectacle of gold and black — will be out of here.

Dozens of American Goldfinches adorn our backyard but they’ll be off before long.

The White-Throated Sparrows don’t sing their “Peabody, Peabody, Peabody” call that livens up our woods all spring and summer but they are around with a new crop of youngsters.  They may head out but we’ll have their northern cousins here all winter.

A White-Throated Sparrow hiding from the camera

I read an interesting article on fall birds by Kenn Kaufman in the latest Bird Watcher’s Digest.  I had never thought about the fact that many more birds migrate in the fall than the spring (due to the hatches during the spring/summer).  Kenn notes that due to the foliage, the duller plumage, and lack of singing, that birding is much harder in the fall — and thus to some a welcome challenge, and to others — a “forget about it” time for birding.   I’m going to take a hard try at picking out the warblers as they come through but I already know it’s going to be frustrating.

A Solitary Sandpiper

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We don’t have a lot of shorebird habitat hotspots in central Vermont so we make do with puddles in cornfields, small mudflats along the rivers and ponds, and other spots where water gathers.  We go over to Lake Champlain or down into Addison County for real shorebird birding.

However, this time of year when stuff is starting to move, we’ll sometimes spot a long-billed migrant in the county.  One spot I like is just down the road from a gathering spot we all love — The Red Hen Bakery — consisting of a little pull off busy Route 2 right beside the Winooski River.  There are often ducks there and today, a sole little wading bird.

I had the dog with me in the front seat and she wanted to join the action as I scanned the river and set up my scope.  I took a few so-so digiscoped shots (the sun was not a big help) and looking over the shots, realized that it was a Solitary Sandpiper.  No big deal per se but the first one for me this year and a nice looking bird.  And by itself — oh yeah, solitary.

Bird Watcher’s Digest Subscription Drive

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I just read a compelling blog post by Julie Zickefoose, an author, illustrator from Ohio who has written many great birding articles and books.  I am currently reading her The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds with Common Birds.

Julie, who writes and edits for Bird Watcher’s Digest, asks us to consider subscribing to BWD if we do not already do so.  She writes in part:

Bird Watcher’s Digest is going to have to find more subscribers to help pay for the cost of putting this magazine out. 
Bird Watcher’s Digest is having a subscription drive. Only $19.95 for a year’s worth of good writing, good backyard tips, ideas for birding excursions, fascinating insight into bird behavior, and clever humor from writers like Alvaro Jaramillo, David Bird and Al Batt. With your paid print subscription, you get free access to BWD’s stunning digital edition, which is the entire magazine plus video and audio bonuses we can only do on the Web. (Several of our columnists, including me, read our work so you can listen to it online in the digital edition). If you lean that way, you can also subscribe to the digital edition alone for only $9.99 per year. Print subscribers also get access to the BWD App for reading on the iPad, Kindle Fire, and other such digital devices.
I don’t know about you, but I can spend $20 without even thinking about it. I can hand a $20 bill to Phoebe and forget I even did it. Such a modest expenditure can bring you so much over the next year. If you enjoy the kind of writing and information you find on this blog, won’t you try the Thompson family’s magazine? 
I just signed up for a digital subscription after reading her request.  Take a look at her article — and see if you can do the same.  It’s a great investment in a great publication.

Backyard Digiscoping

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I’ve fiddled with digiscoping for the last year, reading a lot of forums, shooting a lot of poor shots — both with my point and shoot and with my SLR.  Because of camera shake and problems with picking up images on my SD4000, I’ve decided to work with my Canon 60D and 50mm lens.  I also decided to practice, practice at home on the birds in my yard and patch and work on settings, technique, and just picking up birds in the scope.

So, for that last few days, I’ve lugged my heavy camera, scope, and tripod around our woods trails on my many walks with the dogs and started practicing.  Of course, the dog is a wonderful help.  Every time I try for a Common Yellowthroat or Song Sparrow in the brush, she sees me looking and decides to take a look for herself.  So, a certain amount of “you idiot” or worse accompanies my digiscoping.

Here are some shots I’ve taken in the last couple of days:

Here’s a young Common Yellowthroat hiding in the bushes.  They constantly move and are a real challenge for me to digiscope.

 

Two molting Goldfinches at the thistle feeder.  They seem to be really hitting the food these days.

 

We are getting a lot of hummers to the feeder.  They like to rest in the old crabapple tree.

 

We have quite a crop of song sparrows enjoying the bugs around our yard.  No singing but very active.

Enjoying the birds of summer

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While activity has dropped off in our woods, I’m starting to get the feeling that birds are getting ready to head on out — and trying to enjoy the ones I see during my daily dog walks in our woods.  Last evening, I watched a Cedar Waxwing for some time as it worked a low berry bush, noting the spectacular coloration and trying to envision the feather patterns that made that happen.  Today, we were inundated with Goldfinches on the feeders — just a whirlwind of yellow and black.

We still have Hermit Thrushes and Ovenbirds although only the thrushes are singing.  The other regular on the low-lying bushes is the Common YellowThroat.  They chip pretty steadily as they feed and respond quite well to pishing, hopping up on a branch to check things out.

It’s been hot and muggy for Vermont — not great weather to lug camera gear around the woods.  A cold front is coming through tonight so I think I’ll try to capture some digiscoped shots of our yard birds before they head south.  The hummers are still hitting the feeder during the cooler parts of the day but all in all, it’s the dog days of August.  Birds and birders don’t like it.