Sunday, September 22, 2013

Company

We've had company for the past several weekends.  Some good for birds and some not-so-good for birds.  First the not-so-good: my mother.  Definitely NOT good for birds. Definitely GOOD for us.  We had a ball on Ocean City boardwalk and at the casino which she can tell you all about.  Now for the birding company. Lori and Tara were down the shore with us this weekend.  Unfortunately, we had bad winds for migration so very few warblers.  We did get some good ones. Here are some quick photos. I'm exhausted.

Cooper's Hawk
 This is the one of the strangest things I've seen - it's a Falcon and a Woodpecker perched on the same dead tree.  The falcon is a Merlin which eats other birds for a living.  The woodpecker is a Flicker which I have seen (and reported here) being eaten by a falcon.  Weird.

Flicker (left) and Merlin
 Another photo of Stilt Sandpiper. I can't help posting them.

Stilt Sandpiper
 Here is a tree frog sitting between signs at the Cape May State Park. One of the super nice volunteers pointed it out to us. 
Tree Frog
The best bird of the weekend for me was the Clay-colored Sparrow that Lori, Tara and I found this morning at Higbee beach. It's an unusual bird to begin with but it is a "good" bird because we actually found it and identified it for ourselves rather than being told about it by someone else.  Yay for us. It is also a "good" bird because it didn't fly away or hide. It was completely comfortable being 8 feet away from the 3 of us and 2 dogs too.  Good bird! You are getting 3 photos to celebrate.

Clay-colored Sparrow

Clay-colored Sparrow

Clay-colored Sparrow

I have way more photos to post.  I'm holding back the double Skimmer photos, some gross "circle of life" shots and tons of butterfly shots to post later this week.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great post today, but please don't post any gory ones!
HH

Anonymous said...

That"s so strange! I saw the same thing with Flickers and a Kestrel. I convinced myself that a Kestrel couldn't take a Flicker. But a Merlin sure could!

I have a theory about proximity. It's based purely in conjecture. I think the falcons could need a little distance to build up speed, i.e. power.

But I have no real explanation.

MD