Tuesday morning started dark and colder than expected. The drive to start our route, in an ATV with no windscreen, froze us before we counted the first bird. Luckily, no cloud cover meant the sunrise that greeted us when we arrived managed to thaw us out a bit.
Photography on these hikes primarily serves for identification purposes. The spotting of species of birds and counting is the purpose of the hike. I always carry my Canon 50D with the Canon 100 - 400 mm lens. All the shots are quick, hand-held, and usually at 400mm with me wishing for a bigger lens for the shot. Even the blurry, far less than perfect photographs often perform an important function. In addition to confirming a bird identification, they provide proof for some of the uncommon sightings we make and confirm them for the official records.
This morning started slow. The birds, obviously smarter than us, chose to wait until the sun began to warm the air and the insects began to move about. We counted 41 different species by the end of the hike. We also count number of individuals in each species. A juvenile Bald Eagle sat near the top of a tree, looking around for several minutes. We did see an adult too later in the hike further back on the route. Palm Warblers darted around everywhere, and American Robins flew overhead. We heard and saw many Sandhill Cranes.
I heard the call of the cranes getting closer, and looked up to find them directly overhead. Sometimes the best photographs are up.
We heard this White-eyed vireo before we saw it.
A Red-breasted Merganser swam in a pond with a group of Hooded Mergansers. The Hooded Mergansers are beautiful, but very skittish that morning. They remained on the far side of the pond and flew if approached at all. Even the 400 mm couldn't make a photo of them.
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