A very owly winter

As my friends and family know, I've been a very busy photographer since November and the owls have come out. I've spent nearly every weekend away from home looking for owls to photograph! This is the first year I've been able to find so many, since my birding friends have kept me up-to-date on recent sightings and local hangouts for owls.

This guy here, a Barred Owl, only lives about 15 minutes away from me! Here he is peeking out of a hole he likes to hide in.

Here he is again in the snow, looking sleepy.

There's two trees he hangs out at during the months of November to March along the Beach Road in Crooked Creek State Park.. This one with the hole he's been at more recently, but there's another one I've seen him in earlier in the year. Here are some of the first pictures I've taken of him in the other tree..

Not as photogenic of a perch I must say. Many branches in the way that you kinda have to find the spot where they're out of focus enough so you can get a good view of him.

Anyway, he's one of two barred owls in the park, I heard them making monkey sounds at each other one night. Here's a video of the sound they make (Not my video!)

I also heard them calling individually and I'm surprised as to how distinguishable they are! The one has a shorter, matter-of-fact call. "Who cooks for you. Who cooks for you all." The other has a longer and more syllable-stressed call, more of a "Who COOKS for YOU who COOKS for you alllllllllllll.."

Here's a recording of the second one that I took..

It's so cool to have an owl living so close to my house! One that I never knew about for all the years I've lived here!

Never eat anything bigger than your head

We bought a shiny new kayak a few weeks ago, and we finally got to take it out for its maiden voyage. We went up to Moraine State Park (a favorite of mine) and went looking for our buddy, the Great Egret. We found him at his usual spot, across the lake from the waterfowl observatory, but we couldn't get very close due to the abundance of lily pads and weeds. We did, however, find an osprey farther in the lake, and I got a shot of  him taking off, and then I noticed the nice fish he had! If I had noticed sooner, I would've asked him to share, since it was lunchtime and my stomach was already growling.

We fished for a bit, and I noticed a kingfisher looking pretty sitting silhouetted against the sky..

We head out towards the other end of the lake then, fishing along the way and watching for any birds. We see some Great Blue Herons out in the distance, as well as some Mallards.
Then I see our friend flying and land on the other side of the lake from us. We head on over, and see he's hunting. He's so involved in hunting, he doesn't even give us a thought.

 

In fact, we had paddled a bit ahead of him, and he got within 8 feet of our boat! I thought he was going to walk right over us! Then he took off and landed about twelve feet behind us and continued his hunt.
 

Merely an appetizer!

Ooooh I see dinner!

 We followed, since he wasn't concerned with us, and we were in for a treat! Look at the size of that one!

Mom always said never eat anything bigger than your head...

My hubby and I were betting back and forth "He's not going to get that down!" I bet he would.  I heard of one in Florida eating a crocodile once.

...I'll prove her wrong! Just watch!

Sure enough, after much effort on his part, the fish was in the gullet!

Now just the tail..

*Gulp*

 

Now for dessert!

 And I thought that osprey was hungry..

Before we left to get some dinner too, we did see a few unexpected folks,

Yellow rumped warbler, and a Black-throated green warbler! Didn't expect to see them from our kayak. They seem to be the most abundant of the warblers these last few weeks. A nice ending to a nice day of birding!

Short birding trip after work

We went birding on Friday the 13th, after work, Steve, Brian and I. I got a few lifers, a Black and White warbler, a Bay Breasted warbler, and this Magnolia warbler. She was the only one I got a decent shot of, however. So I thought I'd share it.

Birdshare

Just a quick update, folks! Cornell Lab of Ornithology has chosen another one of my pictures (second one to date!) to post on their homepage Click here to see it Sept 12-19th 2013 Make sure to scroll all the way to the bottom!

To be a waterfowl, observe!

Went out to Moraine State Park today, and I got to try out my dad's fishing kayak. We spotted a great egret from the waterfowl observation deck, so I wanted to go in for a closer look.

Taken by my dad

The lake by the deck was almost completely grown in by lily pads and other water plants, but I managed to slowly maneuver close to where the egret was. As I snuck up on the egret, I noticed some people at the observation deck, observing me! Now I know what it's like to be a waterfowl...kinda sorta?

A red-tailed hawk flies overhead

Osprey fishing technique (I should try it out someday)

So after an hour of creeping up on him and getting side tracked taking pictures of other birds, I finally get up pretty close to the egret and get some pictures in..

I think he noticed me....

"What's that?? It doesn't look like a waterfowl! I'd better fly away!"

He didn't stick around very long, (I guess I didn't fool him with my waterfowl act) but I got these other pictures of a dragonfly, a great blue heron in a tree...

I'm not a bird, but here I am posing please take my picture!

"What do you mean, great blue heron?? There's no herons here! Only us tree limbs! Nope, no great blue herons."

All in all, it was a good day. Birding total of the day was: 3 great blue herons, one osprey, one red tailed hawk, one great egret, 4 turkey vultures, 2 belted kingfishers, a bunch of canada geese, and a bunch of mallard ducks.

A bad day of birding is still better than a good day at work..

We went out with a good friend and excellent bird photographer, Steve Gosser, to Harrison Hills park in Natrona Heights on Labor Day. We were looking for migrating warblers, as there had recently been a lot of warbler action down there.. but it wasn't a great day for migrating.

It wasn't entirely a bad day, as there were plenty of butterflies to keep us entertained. I'm terrible with my butterflies, but luckily Steve has extensive knowledge of them. He was able to identify everything we spotted that day.

This is a Comma.. why is it called that?....

Because it has a Comma on its wings!

And we saw the butterfly of the day,

Red spotted purple butterfly (although it looks like orange spotted blue)

We saw a couple red eyed vireos, a magnolia warbler, a blackburnian warbler, two wood peewees, and several chickadees, tufted titmice, and cardinals.

This was only one of those that decided to stop and pose for us, out in the open, at eye level..

Most of the time, however, we were running into spider webs with spiders on them. They had built their webs across the paths in the park, and every 20 feet or so we'd run into one, whoever was in lead at the time (mostly Steve). I'm not sure about my spider species, but they had like a demon head looking abdomen that was triangular but had horns sticking out. We never got a good picture, as we were mostly trying to avoid them.

We also came across two interesting caterpillars:

  No idea what either of these are.. they were both fuzzy and I resisted the urge to just pet them with my finger, as they may have been poisonous. But they were both interesting sites of the bird-less day.

Birding from my bed

I've been working on a post from my birding experience from this past Labor Day weekend, but I did some unexpected birding last night, that was quite interesting, so I'm going to skip ahead for the moment...


Last night at 3:00 am the cat half woke me up when she jumped on the bed. Then I heard this hoo-hoo..
I sat up and grabbed Brian's shoulder "Did you hear that?? Listen! Shh! ..................................... ........................................ I swear I heard an owl! ......................... ..................................... ............. It was a great horned! ........................... ...................................... ................... Maybe I just dreame-" hoo-hoohoo hooo-hooo "Did you hear it?! It IS a great horned owl! Right outside!"

The next words out of his mouth were why I love him so much.. "Do you want to go look for it?"

YES!

So we jumped out of bed, grabbed a flashlight, my phone (it has owl calls on it!), and shoes and ran outside to where the owl was hooting. It was just across the street in a small patch of trees on my neighbor's property. We just stood there in awe as we listened to it sing.

Then we tried to find it, shining the flashlight about where it was, and calling him with my ibird app. We must have startled it, because then I heard him across the next street up on the hill. I knew it wouldn't stick around long anyway, because there are just a few sparse trees around the neighborhood, nothing the size of habitat it needed to survive, so we followed him. We got right up to the patch of trees he was in again, and listened. Then we tried the flashlight again and this time he didn't fly off, but continued hooting. We couldn't find it though. So we circled up around to the other side of the tree patch and as soon as we got within 15 feet of him, he flew off across the road again and farther away, hooted once, and then took off out of hearing range. We never saw him once.

Oh well, I was just happy to have heard an owl, and a great horned owl was a real treat in my town. We went back to the house talking excitedly as we walked "He was RIGHT THERE!" "I can't believe it!" "That's the first time I've heard a great horned owl!" "Too bad we couldn't see him"

We went to bed, but I was too excited to fall back to sleep too quickly and kept an ear open in case he came back. But he didn't.

As I finally started drifting off to sleep I hear this bark-y screech a few times. I turned to Brian "Are you still awake? Do you hear that?" "Yeah, what is it?" "I think it's a screech owl! Or I guess it could be a raccoon or something." then I hear it's distinctive thrill call. "It's definitely a screech owl!!"
This owl was right about the same patch of trees the great horned was in when we heard him the first time. I was surprised, especially since great horneds sometimes will prey on screechys.
We didn't get out of bed, for this one only called a few times then we didn't hear him again. Plus we both had work in the morning.

I wasn't expecting on doing any birding that night, and it's still a bit early for owls to be calling. I can't wait to go looking for them during the day while they're breeding!!


As a quick note, this morning when I dropped Brian off at work, a red tailed hawk called his signature call and flew about 20 feet above us. How cool!!

Below are pictures (not my own) of a great horned owl and a screech owl

Great Horned Owl image from

http://thebatavian.com/jimnigro

Eastern Screech Owl image from Wikipedia

Birding on the Kiski

Last weekend we tried out the new kayak we recently bought. We started out at Roaring Run trail and went the whole way to Rivers Edge canoe and kayak rental.
We saw countless Canadian Geese and Mallard Ducks, as well as four or so Green Herons, one Osprey, two Bald Eagles, and four Belted Kingfishers.

At the first bridge, near the railroad bridge in Apollo, we saw this guy,



It was right after we tried out a new anchor.. right where the river is at its' swiftest.. a bad idea on our part as we almost sunk the kayak. But, luckily we recovered and turned back to make another pass at this guy. That's about the time my dad lost his cellphone in the river (it's waterproof!).
My husband and I came up close to the heron and he saw us and immediately went into the brush and pretended to be a stick.. raising his head high and staying very still. I took a few pictures and then we turned and headed up river to give him some confidence to come out of the brush again.
After about 10 minutes, he decided we weren't a threat and came out to do some fishing,



Shortly after catching a (somewhat small) fish, he looked up into the sky and stuck his neck out and stood really still. I took the camera away from my eye and saw what he was looking at

 A bald eagle!! I've never seen them so close to home before! Amazing. Here's the look on the Greenie's face:

I'd probably look like that too if I thought I was going to get eaten.

So we watched the Green Heron stand around and preen and cool himself off for about 30 minutes then we continued our travels downriver. We fished along the way, and that's when we saw the Osprey. I didn't get a shot of him, because my camera was in the drybag and I was holding my fishing pole, but he was still a sight to see nonetheless.

Farther down river we saw more green herons flying by and geese and mallards, as well as a few belted kingfishers, who would never stay still for a good shot.

There she is! I did see her try to catch a fish though, she hovered above the water and then dove down, but she didn't catch anything. Maybe next time!

Short and Sweet sweet sweet! I'm so sweet!

For those of you whom would like to just cut to the chase and see only my pictures, this is my Flickr page it has all of my best pictures! I feel I've gotten better as a photographer, and better gear has definitely helped with that.. but you'll see that as you go through, and any constructive criticism is welcome!

Enjoy!

Birds in the Blogosphere

Greetings!

Myself and my hubby recently got into birding, and this blog will be a window to the exciting things we see. Also, some random bird or nature related stuff I find. So sit back, enjoy the Birds on a Blog!

- Jessica and Brian Botzan