Thursday, January 10, 2008

Solitaire Photos



I spent the day out at Jones again, looking for Saw Whet Owl, Red Necked Grebe, and anything else.  I did the full walk out to the point from the Coast Guard station, which takes about and hour and a half.  There were large rafts of Scoter off the point, numbering in the several thousand.  There was also a nice sized flock of Long Tailed Duck.  I also looked around for owl for a good 45 minutes, and was ready to give up when I ran into another birder.  We talked for a bit and I mentioned I was looking for owl.  He said, "I can show you", and pointed to a tree about 20 feet away, where the owl was perched at the top in plain view.   
It was getting later and I thought I'd try one more time for the Solitaire; although I'd finally seen it the day before, I really wanted a photo for the blog.  I went back for the fifth time to Oak Beach around 3pm, and met up with several other folks who had been looking for about an hour without luck.  They left a few minutes later, and the bird appeared almost immediately!  I
 called their cell phone and they raced back, and we all got these great looks at the bird that other birders had been reporting.  The Solitaire perched up on top of one tree, and then flew down and ate a berry, and then flew to another tree--I took a few hundred photos.   Here's one of them...accounting for the five days I put in, this is about a 17 hour exposure.

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