BirdingGirl

These pictures are from my trip to the beach with my mom last Thursday. I was hoping to get some pictures of the Osprey (and her fledglings if they were still around) and sure enough she was out making some passes over Shore Road. I was also following this Northern Mockingbird, who was very active. I followed it down to this dead tree where some sparrows were also hanging out. The Mockingbird was jumping and climbing about the tree like a monkey until finally perching atop one of the tallest branches of the tree, shown in the right-hand side of the picture. Here's the close-up of that shot. Later on I heard the Osprey, which alerted me to get my camera out quickly. I wish I had had it with me back in July when the fledglings were out for practice flights. Their "bleating" calls caught my attention and there they were- probably four or so- flying in the exact same spot over Shore Road. About two minutes later their mother came from the other side of the road (where there ...

These first pictures are from my birding trip to the Charles River three weeks ago. It took me a while to figure out what these little wading birds were, but I feel pretty confident they're Spotted Sandpipers. According to Cornell's All About Birds Website (see the link in my blog's sidebar) they're extremely common on the edge of nearly any water source throughout North America. I returned to the river today and was able to get some more pictures, this time of a solitary bird teetering on top of the lilypads: Let me know what you think of my ID. The turning point came when I got to step 11 in my methodology : the National Geographic Birder's Journal. Sometimes it takes getting a fresh perspective to be able to see the way. Then I returned to my Sibley Guide to see his description of the Spotted Sandpiper that's when I picked up on the yellow bill notation in Sibley's description. Aside from the spots on the body, that was one of the most distinguishable ...

It took me an especially long time to identify a wading bird I had seen at the Charles River about three weeks ago. We were going through a dry period and the river was very shallow. The dam near Watertown Square was a prime spot for viewing herons and other wading birds. I took several pictures of two small birds that I guessed were sandpipers or something in the same family. I kept putting off identifying them in favor of posting pictures of other birds from the trip that I was sure of (the black-crowned night heron , eastern kingbird , juvenile wood ducks , juvenile downy woodpecker ). It's not to say I was lazy during this time, it's just that sometimes it takes me a really long time to identify a bird. I thought it might be interesting to share my methodology: 1. Upload the pictures from my camera 2. Delete the blurry pictures 3. Move the good pictures into a sub-folder labeled "Keepers" 4. If I don't have any good close-ups I'll zoom in and crop a pictu...