outdoor photography

Ash-throated Flycatcher Last Saturday I decided to visit Lake Apopka for the morning.  I'm participating in a competition this year called a Twelve Day BigYear.  It's a pretty fun competition--the idea is that you pick one day each month in a county (I chose Orange Co), and then find as many birds as you can in those twelve days.  It takes some planning, and to some extent the key is to find as many rarities as you can and hope the more common birds will be seen as well.  I'd love to get 200 species on the year, but that might be a bit over reaching. We'll see.  I started my January day with 92 species, mostly around Lake Apopka. Ash-throated Flycatcher Taking Off The biggest rarity was a White-faced Ibis.  It was found during the CBC in December, and thankfully it was still there.  I chose Lake Apopka just so that I could find that bird again.  It also fun to find an Ash-throated Flycatcher.  They were my best photos of the morning...

You Tube Slide Show of My Favorite Bird Photos from 2014 (a work in progress) It's been a pretty great year for birding for me.  I'm especially happy with my results for Seminole County (details for this will be in a future post), but I had my best birding year yet.  And I also had a few trips up north (Boston, Philly), one to California, and one to Mexico. These were not birding trips, but they still allowed me to get several more lifers than I would have had otherwise. Glaucous Guill Lifers are harder to come by now that I have well over 300 species in the state of Florida, but that's okay, I'm not complaining.  It makes the challenge all the more fun.  Here's my list of lifers from 2014: Western Tanager:    Lake Apopka North Shore Restoration Area, FL (01 Jan 2014)   Common Eider: Jetty Park, FL (04 Jan 2014) Western Gull: San Diego, CA (17 Mar 2014) California Towhee: San Diego, CA (17 Mar 2014) Lesser Goldfinch: San Diego, CA (...

White-face Ibis Who would have thought that a White-faced Ibis would show up in little ole' Seminole County? A few get seen in Florida every winter, and sometimes within an hour's drive of my house, but I've never actually chased any of the sightings. This is partly because of the timing (sometimes I'm just unable to get away), and partly because my color blindness.  The differences between a White-faced Ibis and a Glossy Ibis can be so subtle that I've doubted that I would ever be able to be certain I found the right bird.  Generally speaking, unless it is in breeding plumage, to ID a White-faced Ibis, you need to see its red eye and grey bill, since a Glossy Ibis has a dark eye with a brown bill. I figured I'd never be able to see the differences with red-green colorblindness.  But a friend of mine found a young White-faced Ibis about 15 minutes from my home. It's a first year bird, but it has a bright red eye, grey bill, thick white streaking on the h...