outdoor photography

Royal Tern Yesterday morning I arrived in Cocoa at 5am for the Cocoa Christmas Bird Count.  This is my second year participating, and it's always a lot of fun.  We were out from about 6:30am to 6:30pm, counting all the birds we could find our area.  Easily the biggest highlights for me were seeing a White-winged Scoter, the first I've seen in Florida, and a Common Loon, the first for me this year in Florida. We saw about 18,000 scaup, and while most all of them were Lesser Scaup, I found one Greater Scaup in my photos among the rafts of Lessers. There were also huge numbers of Laughing and Ring-billed Gulls, American Robins and Yellow-rumped Warblers.  But we also saw several species that are unusual for that area, even though they're common elsewhere.  In particular, our group was excited to see Tufted Titmice and a couple House Finches.  Other highlights for me were seeing 4 Painted Buntings, 8 Horned Grebes, 2 Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, 1 Northern H...

Blue-headed Vireo Yesterday I did a Christmas Bird Count in the Canaveral Groves area near Cocoa Beach.  I arrived in Cocoa at 5:30am with about 30 other people, and 4 of us went to the Canaveral Groves area to count as many birds as we can see between about 6:40am to 5:45pm--that is, about as long as there was daylight to see birds.  We traveled about 37 miles throughout our area and had a wonderful time.  There were literally thousands of ducks and gulls along the Indian River.  Among the ducks we saw approximately 6200 Lesser Scaup and a smattering of Mallards and Mottled Ducks.  There were many in terms of sheer numbers, but not a lot of variety of species that we could see.  A highlight for me, though, was seeing 4 Red-breasted Mergansers and 7 Horned Grebe. Yellow-throated Warbler We also had a lot of fun with perching birds.  We saw large numbers of Yellow-rumped Warblers and Palm Warblers, but we also saw a few Pine Warblers and Yell...