March 11, 2024

Bird Photography Boat Tour

March 11, 2024/ Gwen Morrison

Our second day of the Whooping Crane Festival continued with another boat tour after returning from the King Ranch and a quick lunch. The afternoon emphasis was on bird photography. The difference was subtle. The guide did suggest some settings to accommodate photographing in the very bright environment of a sunny day. I opted to take the normal opportunities to photograph birds as usual…but then took some photographic challenges too.

I started before we even boarded the boat. Grackles were taking snack packaging out of a trash can. The female seemed to be unimpressed with her partner’s antics.

I attempted to get a double-crested cormorant taking off from the water…managed to capture the form and splashes of water but the eye doesn’t show….plenty of room for improvement.

There were terns (probably common terns) diving toward the water for fish. I tried pointing my camera in that direction and pressing the button to take multiple pictures in fast succession. It was hard to hold the camera still as the boat moved! The shape of the bird as it nears the surface of the water was something I couldn’t study until I looked at my pictures on a bigger screen. This was my first attempt at photographing feeding terns!

The back of a white-tailed hawk – the only sighting of this species of the trip. It isn’t a great picture in the traditional sense….but it does tell a story. The bird was sitting in dead mangroves; the mangroves died during very cold weather a few years ago and recovery is slow; hurricane damage to the Aransas area would be even worse than before if one comes through before the mangroves can become established again.

The birds always seemed to be a little further away than optimal…and the boat was rocking. But I took pictures anyway: white ibis, little blue heron, osprey, great egret, and great blue heron. I tend to take photographs rather than make notes about what I am seeing…it’s easier with the camera already in hand!

And then there were the reddish egrets… with their pink and black bill.

And finally one started foraging…moving rapidly in the shallows. It seemed to veer off suddenly…something there that the bird didn’t expect?

I took group pictures of birds on small islands in the water…always interesting to see how many I can identify on my big screen later. In the one below, I see brown pelicans (adult and juvenile), American white pelicans, cormorants (double crested probably)…all in the foreground.

As I zoomed in on birds that were not in a group I noticed a black skimmer and some Caspian terns.

It’s always a thrill to see a bird I would not have seen without being on a birding field trip like this red-breast merganser. It was a single bird…swimming rapidly away from the boat…and I probably would not have noticed it without someone pointing it out. I’m not sure it was the guide or another participant that noticed it.

The same was true for another black-crowned night heron. I photographed one on the King Ranch in the morning! I was pleased that I was able to find and focus on the bird more easily than many of the others on the boat.

The light began to change as we neared the end of the day. There were enough clouds to try a non-bird landscape shot of the water the sky…a bit of land at the horizon.

I changed a setting on my camera to try an artsy image of a cormorant and the shore as we came back toward the dock.

And then the boat stopped just before we got to the dock….for dolphins. I couldn’t top my husband’s dolphin picture in the bow wave of the big ship, but it was fun trying to anticipate when they would surface!

And then one last picture before we got off the boat! It was a great second day at the Whooping Crane Festival. The next morning was an early one….getting on a boat at 6 AM to see Whooping Cranes in the Aransas National Wild Life Refuge. We headed to the hotel for an early evening to be ready for it.

May 09, 2023

Snowy Egret Rookery

May 09, 2023/ Gwen Morrison

As we were driving to the end of the parking lot at Quietwater Beach after our Blue Angels Cruise, I saw blobs of white in the trees just after where the turn was for the highway. I asked my husband to park, and we went to see what the place was. The sign said “James P Morgan Memorial Park and Botanical Gardens” and it was a little oasis of calm in the highly developed area ….full of the continuation of the beach and a stand of live oaks and pines.

On the beach there were several Skimmers.

In the trees were nesting Snowy Egrets (note the red around the eyes of these birds).

There was also a pair of mallards resting (maybe protecting eggs).

The herons made gentle noises…like they were in quiet conversation with each other. The grackle in the pine trees was the noisy one.

The serendipity of finding a place like this made the day even more special!

June 04, 2019

South Cape May Meadows – Part 1

June 04, 2019/ Gwen Morrison

After dinner on the first full day of the Cape May Spring (birding) Festival, we headed over to South Cape May Meadows, 200 acres near Cape May Point that is owned by The Nature Conservancy. There are two Purple Martin houses near the entrance; I photographed the birds and the ‘green roof’ of the nearby shed while we waited for our group to accumulate.

There were active Black Skimmers on the wetlands. It will take some practice (and more magnification) to truly capture the action. The Canada goose provides a good comparison for size in this sequence.

I caught a portrait of a skimmer that was momentarily still a little later

And a shimmer showing off its wings as the light was fading.

Tomorrow’s post will continue the sights from our late-in-the-day visit to South Cape May Meadows.

May 26, 2019

Heislerville Wildlife Management Area

May 26, 2019/ Gwen Morrison

Our next field trip of the Cape May Spring (birding) Festival was at the Heislerville Wildlife Management Area a the end of Matt’s Landing Road. There are ponds on each side of the road as it gets close to Haase’s Marina. There were shorebirds on the mudflats – like these that (I think) are all Semipalmated Sandpipers. It was a challenge to get birds in small enough groups where the individual birds could be distinguished.

Some are easier to identify than others like this Semipalmated Plover.

On an island in one the ponds: a Double-crested Cormorant rookery! It is one of the few in the mid-Atlantic region. Most of the cormorants migrate further north for the summer and to breed.

There were the usual Red-wing Blackbirds and Crows around too. We heard both Fish Crows and American Crows…not sure which one this was.

Heislerville was the first place I began to realize the numbers of birds that migrate through Cape May in the spring and fall….I couldn’t resist a picture of birds in flight…with a lot still on the mud flat!

There was a group of Black Skimmers on another island almost out of camera range with a Forster’s tern on a log in front.

Overall – the area was rich in bird sightings - and a good contrast to the state forest earlier in the morning.

April 29, 2019

Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge

April 29, 2019/ Gwen Morrison

We visited Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge last weekend…an afternoon and the next morning. The afternoon was very wet so the picture of the visitor center sigh with plants growing through it was taken the next morning in the sunshine.

2019 04 IMG_7015.jpg — The growth around the visitor center was very green…dogwoods were in bloom and pine pollen was everywhere.

The growth around the visitor center was very green…dogwoods were in bloom and pine pollen was everywhere.

On the first day we drove down the main road toward the beach. It was raining and we didn’t try to take any pictures. The wildlife loop is only open to cars after 3 PM and there was a lull in the rain about that time. We started around. I noticed thistles in bloom (attractive to bees),

Heard lots of red-winged blackbirds and managed to photograph one eventually,

And photographed a glossy ibis almost out of camera range.

Near the end of the wildlife loop there were a few of the Chincoteague ponies munching on the wet grass….about that time is started raining again and we headed to our hotel for the night.

The next morning was very breezy and almost cold. Our trip to one of the islands in the Chesapeake Bay was cancelled – winds made it unsafe for small boats. So – we bundled up and headed to the beach at Chincoteague. It is a narrower stretch of sand than when we first saw it more than 35 years ago and when we flew kites here with our daughter about 20 years ago. The gulls were not flying. Only the laughing gulls were at the beach and they were on the ground near the parking lot rather than at the water’s edge.

It was a little disappointing to see only people and roiling water at the beach.

As we started back, we saw a few herring gulls in shallow water protected by the dunes.

The group of birds a little ways from the herring gull was the high point of the morning at Chincoteague: royal terns and black skimmers (and laughing gulls)!

I’ll post later about the egrets and a heron we saw at Chincoteague. Even with the rain and doing most of our photography using the car as a blind, my husband and I both enjoyed the spring birding opportunities at Chincoteague.

February 13, 2019

Another Florida Beach

February 13, 2019/ Gwen Morrison

After lunch at Dixie Crossroads, we headed over to a beach close to Titusville: Cherie Down Park in Cape Canaveral. It was a breezy cloudy day….a little cold. There were people fishing from the beach. At first it didn’t seem like there were very many birds. In some ways that made it easier to photograph the ones that were there.

The Sanderling at the water’s edge was the first bird I noticed.

The Ruddy Turnstone kept moving about. I’m not sure whether I photographed the same bird twice or it was two birds.

A Ring-billed Gull surveyed the beach from a pile of sand in the beach replenishment project area.

Further away a Lesser Black-Backed Gull and Herring Gull were doing the same.

A Pigeon posed with fluffed feathers…protection against the cold wind.

Lots of Brown Pelicans flew by.

I managed to catch a sequence of a group as it went by. The ones with white heads are the mature birds…the brown heads are juveniles.

A Willet walked along the water’s edge.

Just before we left a group of Black Skimmer’s flew by…a good high point for the last of the field trip.

November 28, 2017

South Padre Island and Bay Cruise – Part 2

November 28, 2017/ Gwen Morrison

Our second stop was the South Padre Island Convention Center. There are boardwalks on one side of the building for birds (and other wildlife) viewing. My best pictures there were: black-necked stilt,

A Tri-colored Heron,

2017 11 IMG_5963.jpg — An alligator that was still at first but then headed toward the shore…stalking

A Common Gallinule that was making its way close to the shore (fortunately it wandered further upslope…no drama),

And a Green heron.

We walked to an area where there was a small area of planted vegetation. The small birds there were too hard to photography in the vegetation, but there were quite a few monarchs roosting…a little rest before continuing their migration.

We continued around the convention center buildings. There was a Little Blue Heron on an abutment,

A pelican almost too far out in the water (I didn’t notice the grebe until I looked at the image on the larger screen of my computer),

A Great Egret (not the black legs and feet),

And a Reddish Egret.

At the front of the convention center, I took some pictures of the facades. These must hold up to coastal storms.

There were mud flats on the other side of the convention center….mostly drying since the tide was out. There were White Pelicans,

Brown Pelicans,

Black Skimmers (in the foreground), and

A strutting Tricolor Heron.

As we walked back to the bus, there were some White Ibis walking across the parking lot with us. The underside of the bill was different than I expected!