Saturday, October 10, 2009

The Crown of Autumn...

The first White-crowned Sparrow of the season.


You know summer is over when the White-throated Sparrows show up. And it's officially autumn when the first White-crowned Sparrow is found kicking through the underbrush in the garden as had happened earlier this week.

I was watching my "Fatbirder" ranking go from 322 down to 402 as quickly as the leaves were dropping from our trees. That's what happens when I don't post soon enough! There just hasn't been the opportunity to get out and get photos over the past few days. It seems as you get older, your parts don't work as well as they used to. Hopefully, I'll be out walking by next weekend.

In the meantime, I'll keep my eye on our feeders for anything exciting in the gardens!

The first to arrive were the young White-crowned Sparrows.
I've seen a couple very bright adults, but haven't had any luck getting photos of them, can you say "Jumpy?"
This one was kind enough to land on a branch I have zip tied to one of our feeders AND spin around for me.
They are usually found feeding amongst the leaf litter, but a few of the youngsters have been on our sunflower feeders making it a little easier to photograph them.
Speaking of something exciting in the garden! I was just out talking with one of our neighbors when I spied a Brown Creeper going up one of our large Oak trees! Of course, no camera in hand...maybe next time!

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

A Distraction From Birding...

Just about my favorite photo of a Black-and-White Warbler, I love the circle of light around his bill.

How can I say 'Distraction from birding' when these are all photos of birds? Well, I've been working on updating a photo presentation on Photodex' ProShow 4 for the past few weeks. Though I should have done it long ago, I was hoping for that last minute 'amazing' shot that would shock and awe everyone in my audience(that would be the Doodles and my cat, Heidi) but, it never came. I'm still pleased with the outcome.

So I went back to trying to pick my favorites with quite a few added from this year, I'm happy to say! I'll be giving this presentation at the Southwest Camera Club's meeting on October 19th at the Rocky River Nature Center in Cleveland's Metropark system. If you're in the area, I could use the moral support! Showing my pics to my fellow birders is easy, showing them to other photographers that will undoubtedly criticize them scares me.

I hope at least one person attending will be sparked into going birding and joining our cause to save our feathered friends!

In the meantime, enjoy a few of my very favorite birds...

The Chestnut-sided Warbler is the Warbler that first got my heart pumping about Magee Marsh
and them little warbly things!

Not the best Black-throated Green Warbler shot I have, but he has personality!

Look at the stream lined shape of this Magnolia Warbler.
Isn't it amazing how far such small, light birds can migrate? I am in awe of them all.

No show would be complete without my buddy, the Gray Catbird!
My "Good Morning " friend has left for the winter, but he'll be back again in the spring and have another successful brood in our garden!

We saw this Great Blue Heron on our January mini-vacation to Florida.
Free plane tickets are a wonderful thing!

This Indigo Bunting was so busy finding food for his fledglings, he didn't seem to mind me aiming my lens his way.

This Hooded Merganser was in California at a nature preserve that I can't remember right now.
Doodles, wake up!!

By far, my favorite Red-tailed Hawk photo!
He's a 'guest' at the Medina Raptor Center.

Royal Tern or Peter Boyle reincarnated?

This cute little Veery at Magee Marsh during the Migration Madness didn't care a wit about his audience.

The high point of last winter was finding this White-winged Crossbill, not an everyday sight in northeastern Ohio!

This Black-bellied Plover is from the group of birds that sparked my obsession of birding and photographing them. This was on our trip to visit Laurie's...oops...the Doodles, Aunt Ginnie and Uncle Bruce on Sanibel Island, Florida.
They are great birders and cemetery searchers and taught us a lot during our visit with them. I don't think they quite realized what they were starting with me!
I owe them a big thank you!

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Themeless Thunday Here Tho Thoon?

Tho, how many Doveth do you have to thqueeth to make a bar of "Dove" thoap?

Thunday, Thunday, Thunday!!

And I'm thad. We were at the BirdMobile this weekend and I'm so, so sad. It's the end of the the season and we are starting the 'winterizing' projects. Today I put in the storm windows to keep in a little warmth during our last few weekends out here. We will be done at the end of October. 6 more months until spring migration!! The Doodles cleaned out the Hummingbird feeder...after chasing the Yellow Jackets away! I was at the window yelling "BUZZ-BUZZ" and watching her jump every time! I'm a bad man...

We went to visit Julie the Bander, Kimmay, Hugh and Krazy Karen at BSBO on Saturday...and, o-boy are we going to have an exciting news flash for you! Stay tuned!

Jim McCormac told us these were Great Plains Ladies Tresses, I trust him...
Now I have to go out and buy a wildflower book...great...one more thing to squeeze into my tiny, feeble brain...

This is an easy one! An Asian Multicolored Lady Beetle on Queen Anne's Lace.
I think...

That's a Large Milkweed Bug on some Large Milkweed.
There's a few Small Large Milkweed Bugs on the left of the Large Milkweed Bugs on the Large Milkweed.
Got Milk?

I'm not sure what this is even though I planted it outside of our kitchen window.
It just looked pretty through the screen, so there.
*According to Gabrielle, this is a type of Sedum. I do remember planting that out there somewhere!

Doodles found this in her caterpillar book, yeah Doodles!
It's a Catalpa Sphinx Moth.

Another wildflower found behind the nature center at Ottawa NWR.
The Ottawa driving tour will be open on Saturday October 10th!

You can get to a lot of areas normally closed to the public.
Important update! Thanks to Jann, this is a Garden Coreopsis!
Poor Jann, she has snow on the ground already. Send her a few warm comments!

Doodles spotted this one too! It's a Smeared Dagger Moth.

I wonder what kind of "Dove" soap we'll get from this end...eeewwwww!