Warblers in the Yard 9/22/2018

   On Saturday I had a couple waves of warblers drop out of the sky to the oak and maple canopy of my yard.  The first group consisted of roughly 30 birds that included

Wilson's Warbler

Northern Parula

Black-throated Green Warbler

Magnolia Warbler

Nashville Warbler

Blackpoll Warbler

Tennessee Warbler

    Later a group of about twenty warblers stopped by to feed on insects in the trees.  The remarkable thing about this group was that almost all of them were Nashville Warblers.  A single Blue-headed Vireo tagged along with the warblers.

Blue-headed Vireo

  The Wilson's and an unphotographed Orange-crowned Warbler brought the 2018 yardlist up to 107 species.

Red Knot Ludington 9/24/2018

    Dave Dister called this afternoon to alert me to a Red Knot that Matt McConnell found at the south breakwater at Ludington Harbor.  I headed right out there and found the bird right where Dave said that he had seen it.

Red Knot and Sanderling

It found a tasty morsel...

….that appears to be a Labradoodle embryo.

    

     The young Knot later flew away from the pier but landed nearby on the sand deposits adjacent to the pier.

Kettle Up and Be Counted - Broad-Winged Hawks 9/19/2018

   The Broad-winged Hawks stuck to their tight schedule and flew over Lake Erie Metropark in swirling kettles and soaring streams today. The final tally was over 20,000 of the mass migrators.

Below is a video of an early morning overhead kettle.

    Other migrating raptors included, Northern Harriers

American Kestrels.

and Sharp-shinned Hawks

The Eagle Has Landed 9/2/2018

   A late morning visit to a secluded area of my work site was intended as an antler-retrieving training session for the new pup, Nico.  About the only thing she gleaned from the lesson was an introduction to the distractions of area and hopefully a new found respect for the Earth's gravitational field.   

       The Bald Eagle shown above touched down on the ground with the grace and accuracy of a laser-guided feather.  In contrast, moments later Nico landed on the pavement like a bag of bricks when her center of balance broke the plane of the backseat window as she leaned out to get a better look at a Ring-billed Gull that slowly glided by.