Digiscoping the Gnatcatcher

Here are some of my attempts at catching the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher through my scope. Seems that despite my best efforts, this guy was always able to hide behind at least a little bit of tree stuff. The last shot is my favorite, catching it mid-hover as it is going up to snag an insect off [...]

Birding has been good

With spring migration in full swing now, and no nasty weather to stop it sightings have really picked up. I was lucky enough to go home to Pennsylvania for a day and was able to find 7 species of warbler close to Lake Ontelaunee, one of my favorite places to bird in my county. My [...]

Warblers are a’coming!

Just to whet your appetite on what’s to come, here is my somewhat poor digishot of a Louisiana Waterthrush. I thought that putting everything in b&w except for the warbler itself would jazz it up a bit. I know that there have been recent controversies about doctoring photos but you have to remember that this [...]

Montclair Hawkwatch update

It appears that Broad-winged Hawks are finally starting to arrive. We had our first double-digit day yesterday and hopefully as this weather clears we will get an excellent flight. Here are the numbers so far for the season.

Daily Raptor Counts: as of Apr 11, 2007

Species
Day’s Count
Month Total
Season Total

Black Vulture
0
1
15

Turkey Vulture
10
55
258

Osprey
5
40
66

Bald Eagle
0
0
1

Northern Harrier
2
6
15

Sharp-shinned Hawk
9
43
120

Cooper’s Hawk
2
18
60

Northern Goshawk
0
0
1

Red-shouldered [...]

Mourningcloak

The Mourningcloak (Nymphalis antiopa) is a medium-sized (2-4 inchwingspan) butterfly which is easily identified by the yellow trailing edge to its wings. On the inner edge of the yellow border there are iridescent blue spots making it very striking and distinctive. It belongs to the family Nymphalidae which are known as the ‘brush-footed butterflies’. Their [...]

Inquisitive Birds

Some days at the hawk watch the weather is less than ideal and the the hawks are not flying. These are the times when it is particularly fun to watch the other local birds behavior. Since I am stationary most of the day, the birds become used to my presence and settle down to enjoy [...]

Big Flight of the Kestrels

American Kestrel, photo by copeg.
Today was the day of the American Kestrel. It started at 10 am and by the time I finished counting at 6 pm, 28 of these light weight, Microtus-killing machines had flown past. That was counting 10 in the last hour, and four birds in the last few minutes of that [...]

When the weather isn’t right for a good raptor flight, its a good chance to put in a little time digiscoping. Unfortunately today was particularly cloudy and the lighting was not optimal but it gave me a good chance to practice with manual focus. I set the camera to infinite focus and simply focus with [...]

Pre-snow hawk watch

The first day went smoothly, minus the various encounters with curious dogs and their unconcerned owners. You would think people would be embarrassed to have their dogs sniff thru perfect strangers bags but no, instead its our fault that we “don’t like the dogs.” Never mind that the dogs are supposed to be on a [...]

The Watch is about to begin, what’s up with this weather

Tomorrow marks day one of the Montclair Spring Hawk Watch, weather permitting. After reaching about 75°F today the thunderclouds are rolling in and we might get a good storm tonight. Thats all good but what about this…snow on Friday? That could make things really interesting. Well, hopefully I will have some reports soon and some [...]