Spotted the Spotted Sandpiper!

After several attempts to get a couple of close-ups on some Spotted Sandpipers seen in the area recently, Kelly finally got close enough today! Annnnd when it should have been the perfect setup, her ridiculous husband forgot to change back some of the settings on the camera! Sooo, more than half of her (what should have been amazingly crisp, detailed photos) came out dark, and even worse, blurry! I couldn't believe that I had made such an amateur mistake! I really beat myself up over this really awesome missed opportunity! Anyways, we spotted the Spotted Sandpiper on a nice Sunday afternoon drive, and since Tinley was actually sleeping, we setup for an ambush on the poor guy. Kelly got out and hid down by the shoreline behind a tree and I took the car and came up on the bird from the opposite way, forcing him to scurry down the shoreline right towards her. They have never been so cooperative before! Here are some of the final results! Keep in mind, my more than poor adjusted camera settings! Regardless, awesome job Babe, because they are still way better than any Sandpiper photos I've ever taken before!

Busy House Wrens!

I came up on a pair of House Wrens this morning who were really busy. They were making their nest in a playground swing! I sat and watched them for awhile and they didn't seem to mind. Also while I was sitting there watching them, I had a few other visitors come and say hi.

This is a Barn Swallow that dropped in for a few minutes. He just sat there and hung out with me.

 This is a Gray Catbird. They get their name from the mewing that they make that sounds exactly like a cat.

 Here are a couple more pictures of a Tree Swallow. He almost hit me in the head a few times because I was close to one of his nests as well.

 

 

Baby Birds!

It's that time of the year when the birds are all getting busy! End result, lots of baby ducks and geese walking across the roads and causing accidents. I always have my camera with me, and today when coming home from school, I passed a couple of little birdies. I had to take a couple of pictures. I also put a few older pictures on here as well. I'll label those below so you know what you are looking at. Enjoy!

 I got a couple pictures of some geese cruising past me the other day.

 This is a house wren, very cool bird with quite the chatter box. The bottom two pictures are of the Wren going into a box that a Tree Swallow already has a nest in. It waits for the Swallow to leave then it flies in and starts taking the nesting out and throwing it on the ground. It's too funny!

 The first of the season Yellow Warbler. They are hard to sneak up on, and sometime all you can get is a picture of them flying away! Oh well.

Sniped Him!!

After many trips out after the O' so extremely hard to sneak up on Wilson's Snipe, we were finally successful! It is such an awesome bird, that I just couldn't settle for pictures that were sub-par, even with the not so expensive photography equipment that we own. So here is what he is supposed to look like, up close! Just so you know, that long beak is used to to grab small invertebrates under the mud. They feed on mudflats on the edges of lakes and wetland areas. They are only about 6 inches tall, so they are really easy to miss especially because they blend in so way, obviously! These were taken from about 20 feet away! That might just be as close as I'll ever get to him.

Tree Swallow Day

Kelly and I took sometime today to get out and enjoy the almost perfect weather. It was a little on the chilly side, but overall it was fairly nice. We took a trip to the local county parks to see what we could find. There were lots of birds around but mainly sparrows and swallows. We had a first of the year appearance by two Brown Thrashers but they were too shy to get their pictures taken. Overall, a good day with a couple pictures of some friendly Tree Swallows and an aggressive and overly protective Red-Winged Blackbird.

The angry Blackbird gawking at us as we walked by.

 This is a series of a couple of Tree Swallows that were following us around for a little while. They were curious to see what we were up to I guess.