Category: Birds

Project Chekov: Sparrows, Swifts and Swallows

Today is one of those difficult days in the birding realm.  If you have spent any time with this blog you probably know by now that when it comes to Sparrows I generally throw in the towel.  There just isn’t enough differences discernible in the field to really come out confident on what you have in the tin.  There are also difficulties when it comes to the Swallows and Swifts so figured it was time to get them all out of the way.

Let’s start with the Sparrow.  Now, throughout this post please keep in mind that the identification can be freely debated and if you know specifics please share!  With that, this is a small brown and gray bird so we’ll tag it with Sparrow.

Admittedly, this on is a little darker hued that we see and it has some darker tones in the under feathering along the neck.  One cause may due to the fact that this shot (and the one below) were taken in a storm which may have deepened the colors from either the wetness or the clouds.

I do like the picture and why I tell everyone there is no reason to get down if their designated day to hit the field turns out dreary.  Sure, you’ll need to tap that ISO dial up a bit and probably even back off the shutter speed but you have one thing going for you.  The rain tends to slow down the birds and cause them to spend a little more time on their perches (under cover of leaves of course).  For the hyper birds this is a godsend when it comes to getting shots of them.  UPDATE: By the way, while doing  quick search for one of the pictures below I stumbled on the House Sparrow which does match the neck coloring – pretty darn close in my opinion so let’s go with that for now.

Here is another Sparrow likely taken in a similar setting.

If I had to take a guess, the reference books tend to point to a Chipping Sparrow with that rust cap and eye-line.  Small, brown, gray … it’s a Sparrow in my book – any finer classification is just icing on the cake.  Again, I do like how the composition came out on these two shots – the branches seem to push the viewer’s eyes right to the desired focus of attention – granted it is just Sparrow.

Hit the link to read more about this difficult to identify set of birds.

Continue reading Project Chekov: Sparrows, Swifts and Swallows

Project Chekov: Red-Winged Blackbird and Robin

Now you gotta give me props for my clever Blackbird and Robin title! Here we are with another entry in Project Chekov. I may have underestimated this little project but no good project comes easy. As you know by now, this post features two birds. Neither of these birds are technically new to the Blog and therefore sans check marks. However, it does give me a chance to significantly improve my offering of the following bird:

That there is the cleverly (okay, maybe not) Red-Winged Blackbird.  These shots definitely up the game from the distant branch cluttered shot from before (link here).  I bet that if you live anywhere in North America you have seen this particular bird and per Wikipedia one of the most abundant and studied birds in these parts.  With that stated, you would think there would be more interesting information readily available on them.   Pretty weak in that area across both Cornell’s bird site and Wikipedia.  There is one key behavioral aspect that they lightly touch upon, but in my opinion understate.

These birds are downright aggressive on intruders.  Get to close to their territory and they’ll start puffing themselves up, displaying their wings in an aggressive manner and get to squawking something horrible.  If that doesn’t get your attention they’ll commence dive bombings.

hit the jump to read a little more about this blackbird and the other featured bird of the post

Continue reading Project Chekov: Red-Winged Blackbird and Robin

Project Chekov: Quiscalus

Quiscalus, oh where art thou Quiscula?  I’ll tell you where it is.. sitting right there on that der braunch staring at the wild blue yonder.

Okay, okay, to be honest, we are technically looking at a Quiscalus Quiscalu… and why are we looking at a Quiscalus Quiscalu?  Well, for a couple of reasons.  First off all, my Quail pictures “were found wanting”.  Turns out a set of Quails that I was planning on featuring were moving a little to fast for my settings.  Then my fall back set of Quails turned out too grainy thanks to taking them in questionable light.  Thank god I had a few Quiscalas laying around.  Okay, so I’ve gamed the system a tad, but you go with what you have and this is ALL I have at the moment – just for foreshadowing purposes, this will happen again.

So, I’ll stop being all scientific on you.  Quiscalus Quiscalu is the scientific name for the Common Grackle.  It does give them a little more air of importance.  This is good because when I see a Common Grackle I get extremely annoyed – basically I rank them in the category of outright nuisance.  They tend to congregate into flocks and proceed to make such a racket they’ll give you a headache.  To top it off they’ll basically push over any other smaller birds in the area that get in the way of their foraging.  Bad Grackle, very very baaaad Grackle.   Now the Grackle has appeared on the blog previously (link here).  If you go to that link you may pick up on the fact that this set might be from the exact same shoot as that previously featured Grackle.  Desperate times call for …. shopping!  There are actually different frames so I didn’t cheat you there, but I decided to try out some quick shopping – I openly admit that I do standard improvements on my shots but that generally equates to fixing some exposure issues, touching up some small blemishes and compensating for noise when lighting conditions were less than ideal.  What I generally do not do is alter it dramatically – not because I can’t, but just because it seems a little shady.  Whenever I do something a little more than the standard digital darkroom I’ll be sure and let you know – don’t want to lose your trust like some devious photojournalists over the years.  Now, this is not my best work by any means, but we recently upgraded to Photoshop CS6 and wanted get some quick practice in.    Here was a mid shop shot which gives you a feel for what I was dealing with.  Waaaaay too much clutter in that shot which should have been fixed in the field.

Trust me, it started out a LOT worse.  In fact, the following shot gives a good idea of how crappy the composition was.  Annoying branches cutting through the key focus of the scene, branches encroaching on the subject and lost detail in the Grackle itself which is the most interesting part of this bird – beyond the cool eye of course.

I did not spend enough time on the clean up to do anything crazy like print it or blow it up, but for web purposes, I have to admit I like the first shot much better than the others.  I know there’s haters out there but they’ll go on an on about how great Ansel Adams was, oblivious to the fact he was shopping the hell out of his product as well – he just had to work a LOT harder in the darkroom.  Again, I’ll let you know when I’m doing major cosmetics so don’t get too concerned.

All of this discussion on shopping allows me to skip the specifics on this annoying bird.  They are foragers, have a tendency to destroy crops, steal food from other birds and squawk up a storm.  The only real thing they have going for them is their plumage is somewhat iridescent and shimmers in the sunlight in combinations of purples, greens and blues.  They do have a cool yellow eye, but not cool enough to want to see them around the feeders.

Qui”See”cal”You”s later

Project Chekov: Pied-Billed Grebe

And we’re back to work with another entry in Project Chekov.  Today’s featured bird is the “Chicken of the Water”.   Well, that is what I call it since, in my humble opinion, it looks like it is a chicken and it is found in the water.  Pretty creative eh, just missing the Sea part and then it would have been really funny .. or maybe not.  This is not the first time this particular bird has graced the pages of LifeIntrigued.  It was also featured in the Henderson Bird Viewing series (link here), so no check mark here.  The good news is I think these pictures are better than the previous set – I think it is a younger one.

In case you missed the previous post, this cute little water bird is a Pied-Billed Grebe.  Looks like it is in the Winter plumage based on the missing band around the bill – could just be young, but going with the Winter version for now.  As with many of the birds of late, this Grebe has North America covered either all year round or in the Summer months when it pushes North towards/into Canada.  They are sans webbing between their toes and instead rely on lobes on the toes to move about the water – I believe this is the same situation as the Coots (link here).

I lost a little of the eye glint in this shot, but you know I’m always looking for that cross body head shot.

So like the the Loon (link here) the Pied-Billed Grebes have their legs positioned far back on the body.  It isn’t stated over at Wikipedia, but pretty sure this makes them awkward on the land.  They even nest on the water which was news to me – disturbances by boats/waves during their breeding season can ruin their nests (suckage).  It did mention they prefer being on the water and rarely use that envious capability of flight.  When in danger they simply dive underwater and swim a great deal of distance to safety – even keeping their body submerged while poking their head above water to see if the danger has passed.  Both parents will carry their young on their backs (even diving).  This is the composition I’ve been desperately trying to get in my portfolio.  So far, no luck, but I’ll keep trying.

That’s it for today boys and girls, it is core night and the longer runs don’t take pity on weak abs.  See ya’ soon and keep an eye out for those water chickens!

Project Chekov: Oriole

A quick search of the blog turned up zip on today’s featured bird which is a tad bittersweet.  On the sweet side this means an official new check mark in the bird list – yeah!.  On the less sweet side it means I do not have any better pictures of this bird.  If the Nuthatch shots in the previous post were a step forward, this just might be a tiny step backward (for the moment).

This has to be one of the easier birds to identify.

Not a lot of birds out there sporting a dominant color palette of orange and black.  When you see one, most of us immediately think Baltimore Oriole.  There are some variations of the Oriole and an orange bearing Redpoll, but for the most part this bird stands out on its own – and not hurt by having a Major League Baseball team named after it.  Since the previous shot was rather weak when it comes to bird photography, I went in search of a better one.  All the archives could produce .. of those processed to this point .. was the following flight shot which lacks some crispness on the body, but I do like the motion composition in the wings.

My major problem is every time I see one of these beautiful birds, I’m sans camera – cue the Pileated Woodpecker lamenting.  Clearly they know this and just do it as a means to taunt me for not catering to their feeding needs.  There are seed and nectar feeders in the yard, but no fruit feeders.  They just seem like too much work for a limited number of opportunities to actually see them.  At least the Hummers basically hang out in close vicinity – these Orioles are a bit of recluse in my opinion.  According to Cornell, they do not prefer the deep forest which may be one reason we have limited access to them (we live in the middle of a forest).  They do make one cool nest – looks like a hanging sack of string.  There are no shots of one in this set, but there are a couple in the hopper from another shoot – at the time I didn’t know what bird it belonged to, but solved that while researching for this post.

Hit the jump to see some less than spectacular shots of the Oriole.

Continue reading Project Chekov: Oriole

Project Chekov: Nuthatch

Today is a milestone of such for me. Not so much the ongoing record number of posts this month, but more on a personal level.  Today’s road run crested 10 miles which puts me 6 months ahead of schedule on the yearly training program.  This came at a cost of 7 pounds – must force myself to be more diligent on the hydration.  The Winter months are usually recovery time for me (the season can take a toll on the old body), however, this year I’m trying to run more outside during the Winter months.  Hoping this will help curtail some reoccurring  injuries that has plagued me late in the season.  Of course, this means that I had to buy additional sets of cold running suits/shoes  and as of late put up with 4 to 7 inches of snow mixed with solid layers of ice.  It does force me to keep my foot falls under my body which helps to curb any residual heal strikes.  We’ll see how this goes but for now definitely exciting.   To celebrate let’s spotlight another winged creature.

Today we are revisiting the White-Breasted Nuthatch.  This is definitely not a new bird to the blog but today’s shots are certainly a lot crispier than any of the other offerings on this bird to date.  It is actually embarrassing how bad the first set of pictures was (link here) and even the later shots while walking the park (link here) leaves a lot to be desired).  This is one of the reasons I started blogging in the first place – to allow me to track my progress in the field of photography.  Still thousands of miles to go on the journey but doubt anyone can argue there is some progress.  These Nuthatches are common in our area and a frequent visitor to our feeders – they really like those sunflower seeds.  They have a unique coloring that makes it fairly easy to identify, but one of their behaviors is a dead giveaway.

They have a tendency to walk DOWN tress and branches.  Pretty impressive they can keep control like that (and avoid those dreaded headrushes).  These Nuthatches are not too social at our feeders.  You will see one come and stage in a nearby branch, survey the situation, dart in, grab a seed and head back out into the trees to consume it.

Hit the jump to see some feeder shots

Continue reading Project Chekov: Nuthatch

Project Chekov: Mallard

Today’s featured bird isn’t new to the blog due to the abundance of viewing opportunities we have in the Midwest (and honestly those previous shots of these birds are likely better than this new set but you have to go with what you have).  There probably isn’t a body of water of any size where you couldn’t find at least one of these birds hanging out along or paddling around.  To say they have North America covered when it comes to regions would be an understatement.  Yes, I’m referring to that common yet colorful duck called a Mallard (and yes, you get the head across the body shot)

The good news is the adult male birds (called Drakes) are super easy to identify.  Just look for the dull yellow bill attached to a iridescent green head.  If you are lucky you can also tell by the  iridescent purple blue speculum feathers – although according to Wikipedia they do molt those for a short period of time in the Summer.  Now the females are a completely different story.  As with many birds, the male displays the fancier coloring where the female remains in the more drab browns.  This makes it very difficult to distinguish from the other female species – reason why I always try to take shots of surrounding birds when it comes to females.

“Umm, excuse me, are you taking a picture of my ass?”

“Uh.. no I was shooting that little splashy thing over there, yeah, that splashy thing.”

Left the one above in here because it did show a little bit of the blue on the wings but mainly because it looks like it took a golf ball to the side of the head.  My guess is it was minding its own business simply crossing a fairway to bring nourishment to its family just as Linda was blasting a 5 wood out of the rough.  Pour duck, another victim of her golf game (Linda 2 – Innocent Waterfowl ZERO).

Hit the link to read a little more about these Drakes.

Continue reading Project Chekov: Mallard

Project Chekov: Loon

Finally, we get to head back into the water to see our latest featured bird and NEW bird list check mark! This particular subject is often related to Canada seeing as how they chose to use this cool bird on their dollar coin commonly referred to as, yes, the Loonie. This by the way happens to be my favorite coin – I think there would have been better uptake of our failed dollar coin if they had bothered to design it after the Loonie as opposed to having everyone confuse it with a slightly larger quarter.  But money isn’t the topic for today’s post, but the Common Loon is!

Now I happen to really like the looks of this bird – long, sleek and deadly in the water.  According to our friends over at Wikipedia, this bird is so cool it has more than one name with the other being Great Northern Loon.  I actually thought this particular bird was taken at Devil’s Lake up by Baraboo, Wisconsin back in July 2012.  However, when I went back to confirm that it looks to be taken in the Porcupine Mountains instead.   One thing for sure, I wasn’t able to get too close to it having to rely on the reach of The Beast just to get a decent shot of him.  Check that, it may be a him or a her since plumage of the two sexes is similar.    As mentioned, they are extraordinary divers and underwater swimmers capable of chasing down their prey (primarily fish) and either skewering or grabbing it with that dagger of a  bill.  As you can tell from the pictures, they lay low in the water paddling with their webbed feet until they spot a fish and quickly dive under the water (splashless).

Their legs are actually located relatively far back on their body which contributes to the efficiency in the water, but makes it difficult for them to maneuver on land.  They prefer to spend as much time in the water as they can, only coming out when it is time to nest.  This awkward movement on land is how it acquired its name from the word lumme/lum which derives into lummox/awkward/clumsy.   I never had the chance to experience this land difficulty or for that matter see them in the air so unable to provide a firsthand account of their abilities there.  It did look quite graceful on the water.

Interesting enough, they are unable to take flight from land instead requiring them to swim against the wind to gain lift for their large frame.  Once in the air they are considered quite capable.  Looks like they are aggressive if a predator invades its space or has the audacity (a few more times and it will lose the socialist stigma) to come near their nests – that is when that dagger is pressed into action.  Not much else to really say about this bird other than I am looking forward to the when I can get closer shots (although pleased I was able to get my signature composition of head turned across the body).  Oh, one late tidbit – they are the State Bird of Minnesota in case you happen to be asked that at some trivia event (you can thank me later hehehe).

Have a good one – I’m heading to bed

Project Chekov: Kingbird and Killdeer

Today’s featured bird was a bit of a surprise to me.  Linda and I were up in Baraboo, Wisconsin checking out the International Crane Institute and decided to tear ourselves away from the Cranes and take a little walk out on their trails.  Birders will never pass up the opportunity to check out the locals.  We quickly came to a marshy field with an abundance of cattails.  There were a few Red-Winged Blackbirds meandering about on the edges of the treeline, but not a whole lot of activity in the field itself.  At the time I thought this was a little strange thinking this would be a great spot to hang out if I had wings.  About that time I noticed what looked like a dark spot in the middle of the marsh.  Time to bring out The Beast.

Sure enough, it was a bird!  Without a lot of other options I decided to make the best of the situation.  This meant hand-holding an 8 pound glass on a bird that didn’t even fill up one focus point.  The fact that you can actually tell it was a bird is a miracle in itself.   I had to bring the subject in a little closer in the digital darkroom.

While processing the pictures it began to dawn on me this little excursion into the field may have yielded a new check on the ol’ birding list.  To the reference books!  Well, after going through a number of different options I landed on an Eastern Kingbird which .. wait for it… is indeed a new bird – yeah! (assuming it was classified correctly – feel free to weigh in with comments).

Hit the jump to continue reading about this interesting bird

Continue reading Project Chekov: Kingbird and Killdeer

Project Chekov: Junco

It’s been all about deconstructing Xmas around here as of late.  The 13′ tree went down today along with most of the interior decorations.  Not sure which is more work, running a half marathon or hauling all the boxes up and down the stairs!  The good news for me is today’s post is pretty short.  This is mainly due to only having two pictures to show off from our featured bird of the day.  Usually, I have a number of pictures to wade through to find my favorite poses, check for crispness etc.  Not the case with this set, basically processed the entire set of pictures taken of the Dark-Eyed Junco.

We have a lot of these around the house over the Winter months so likely didn’t give them much attention while out in the field.  There are a number of different variations of this particular bird with many regional differences.  I generally do not tend to further classify these birds beyond the standard Dark-Eyed level.  This is the same approach I take to their family as a whole since they are members of the Sparrow family and those are nearly impossible to identify with any certainty.  They Summer in Canada and Winter all across the US.   The Junco is not new to the blog having been introduced twice in 2010 (link here and here).  However, this post probably has the clearest shots of them.

These birds tend to stay on or near the ground foraging for seed and insects (yes) although not sure how many insects are hanging around here in the Winter months (especially with the abundance of snow that has fallen as of late).  Where I see them the most is directly under our feeders foraging for any fallen sunflower seeds.  I always throw a little on the ground to make it easy for them – can’t remember once ever seeing them actually on the feeders themselves.  Chickadees are on the top of the list for least afraid birds around here.  They will hit the feeders as soon as get them cranked up on the pole.  Juncos are second when it comes to boldness.  Whenever I finish filling the feeders I always take about 4 steps back and see which bird is going to be the brave one of the day.  The Chickadee will try some quick test flights in to see if you react at all and then go directly for seed and then proceed to fly off into the nearby trees to eat – they never eat at the feeder.  Juncos will jump out next but forgo the reaction tests.  Juncos do make for a great seasonal Calendar.  When they arrive it is Winter time and you can tell when the Winter is over when you see the last of them at the feeders.  Guessing they flock back to Canada as soon as it’s warm enough for them – that or they just really hate to be around Hummingbirds (they take off about the same time the Hummers arrive).  Not much else to really say about these birds.  Very identifiable in the field, just keep looking near the forest floor – now getting a picture is a pain since they are always jumping around and when they do stop it’s usually in the middle of shrubs and branches making it impossible to get a clean focus.

Looks like our Polar Vortex has retreated – may have to break out the suntan oil!  See you again soon!