Dang Limpkin

Sometimes, I feel like birds are just toying with me. Birds are not the most cooperative photo objects.  I am fully aware that when  you are tracking down a bird with a spotting scope (or large camera lens) that a bird's instinct is to wonder if the thing staring at it is trying to eat it. But sometimes I find myself in a battle of wits to get a photo and bird is just being a dink.

I've mentioned before how much I love meandering around Viera Wetlands in Florida. The birds there are very chill and you can get some great shots. But even in places where birds are mellow...sometimes they mess with you.

Towards the end of my time in Florida, I was surprised that I didn't find a limpkin. I've had them in Viera reliably and though I do have photos of them, it's always fun to see birds you don't normally get to see.

On my last day near Viera, I was driving around eeking every photo I could of the early evening light. All of a sudden, a limpkin appeared on the side of the road as I creeped past in my rental car. I went well past it, leapt out of the car and snapped a few backlit photos. A documented limpkin, but not the best since the light was behind the bird and not behind me. Viera Wetlands was crowded with bird festival folk and locals who were taking advantage of the light and the birds as well. I wondered if I could walk past the limpkin and get a photo with it in better light.  I got back in my car and reversed, thinking that I would scare the limpkin less if I was in the vehicle, rather than walking past. As soon as I got the car backed up and my scope and camera set up...the limpkin had disappeared back into the vegetation.  How can such a large rail like thing hide so easily?  Grrrr.

So, I waited.  And Waited.  The light was beginning to shift from perfect to a little too dim for photos.  More cars were approaching so I thought I might as well leave the limpkin behind.  After I loaded my scope in the car and slowly drove away...the dang on bird appeared again!!  What a dorkwad.  So, I went back to where the sun was behind it, got the limpkin in the scope and got about 79 photos of this:

The back of it's dang on head! Now is the point where I wondered if the bird was purposely messing with me.  Cars drove past it, some stopped within 15 feet of it and it looked them and then continued about its snail eating business.

Finally, for one brief second, the bird gave me a glance and this is what I got.  This bird wasn't going to make it easy.  I do like this photo because you can see how the upper mandible on its bill curves slightly to the right at the tip. That's apparently an adaptation for wrenching snails out of the shells. But I can add it to my official digiscoping list for the year.

Speaking of which, as of Saturday, I have 53 different species in my Big Half Year photo album and I've already hit the 50% mark for my pledge goal!  Thank you to everyone who is contributing to the effort to get a visitor center built in Sax Zim Bog!

Great Horned Owl Nesting In Planter

So, with all my crazy travels, it's been tough to keep up with all my back emails. Boy, have I missed a whopper! Thank you, so, so much to Robbyn Spratt for sending this my way! Brace yourself, are you ready for this? Okay, here it goes:

There's a great horned owl nesting in a planter in Viera, FL.

Yes, you read that correctly. Viera, FL home of one of my all time favorite birding spots, Viera Wetlands has an owl nesting in a pot! Apparently, a pair of great horned owls chose to use a planter outside of the Brevard County Commission and the eggs have hatched--there is even a LIVE owl cam. The camera does not appear to be visible at night, however, there are clips that you can watch any time, so bookmark the Brevard County Owl Cam for some on the job entertainment.

This is an awesome diversion, especially since the owls at the Valmont Owl Cam appear to be having issues.

More Birding Fun At Viera Wetlands

We take a small break from gulls to talk about a few other species. I have a few more birds to share from our second field trip that we led to Viera Wetlands while at the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival. One of the funny things was after I got my lifer limpkin earlier in the week, I kept getting them again and again and again. I could not escape the limpkin. It's funny how some birds are like that: so tough to get in the first place and then once you have them on your list, they're everywhere! I even got to hear their crazy loud calls, which was a bonus.

I was doing a bit of reading on limpkins on Birds of North America Online and I must have been making sounds while reading because Non Birding Bill asked what was so interesting. I read to him, "Limpkin has previously been allied with a wide range of bird families, including with ibises and spoonbills based on bird lice. Relationship of finfoots and sungrebes to other gruiforms and Limpkin has caused confusion."

To which he started laughing. I'm not sure if he was laughing about birds having allies, or birds being classified based on lice, for the idea that there is a bird species out there called finfoot or just laughing at birding in general (as is his usual fashion). Anyway, the bottom line is that no one can seem to agree as to where this apple snail eatin' bird fits taxonomically. Is it a rail, is it a crane? Who can say?

Oh, I've been asked to clarify something about Viera Wetlands. It's not a sewage treatment area, but the wetlands filter for the St. Johns River. Years ago, this area was drained for crops and cattle. The wetlands' plants absorb metals and other contaminants, a cheaper way to filter waste water than mechanically at the sewer plant. Whatever it is, if I were going to introduce someone to birding, this would be a great place to take someone, great birds, crazy looking birds, close and easy to see. Many bird photographers love it because the birds are accessible and the lighting is fabulous.

Check out this little sora. It crept out of the reeds and put on a show for a good portion of the morning. I couldn't take my digiscoping equipment off of it. How often do you get a sora posing for you out in the open. They're nothing but a bunch of Lurky McLurkLurks up in Minnesota. These are amazing little rails that walk about in marshes eating mostly vegetation, although they do eat some invertebrates. Their feet are about as big as their bodies. It's legal in some states to hunt them, but I can't imagine that you would A. get very much meat to eat and B. that they would not taste very well.

We had a film crew that was out with this particular field trip and they even got some sora footage. Not being birders, they didn't have an idea of how hard it can be to see a sora, much less film one. While watching the sora, I looked up and noticed some movement in the reeds not too far away...

...low and behold, it was an American bittern. I think I've been to Viera about four times now and every time I go, I see a bittern. This was kind of a bonus bittern, we saw one earlier in the morning but didn't get a great look. We only saw it when it flew and then it buried itself proper into some reeds. This one had the sun right on it and was easy to get in the scope. The American bittern was nice, but when we asked our group in the morning what bird they'd like to see, almost the whole group answered, "least bittern." Word had spread through the festival about our success earlier in the week at finding a least bittern and this group hoped for the same. While our group was going around the ponds, we ran into my buddy Clay Taylor. I told him to give me a call if he happened to see the bittern so we could bring our group over.

Later in the morning we got the call. Clay had the least bittern and our group should drive over. After a few missed directions, we made it towards Clay, he had stayed on the least bittern for us. He instructed me to stop the bus an for all of us to get on the opposite side of the bittern and approach him slowly, the least bittern was a bit nervous. The group snuck over about as well as a group of anxious 20 twenty birders could sneak and we got he scopes on the least bittern.

And there was the tiny bittern yet again. It was nice of Clay to stay on the bird for us, even though he wasn't part of the field trip. I joked to everyone that if this was a life bird, it was sponsored by Swarovski. I made sure to treat Clay to dinner at Dixie Crossroad later as a thank you. Check out the crazy yellow eye that least bittern has going on. Awesome bird!

The whole trip wasn't just about rails and herons, we did have some sparrow action. If you had never experienced a savanna sparrow, Viera wetlands was a great place to go, these birds were everywhere. If you stood in one spot, you could easily find one foraging near you in less than two minutes. As we were winding up our trip, we noticed Clay had his digiscoping equipment up on another bird...

...he loaned me the photo of the great egret trying to eat a huge frog, isn't it awesome?! And now that I think about, Clay has a knack of digiscoping birds trying to eat food that's too big for them. There was the recent anhinga vs fish and a while ago there was the ring-necked duck trying to eat a large snail. I didn't get to see the egret finish eating the frog, too many eyes were watching it. It's hard enough to eat large food, but this egret must also contend with other birds that would want to steal the food from it. I kind of giggled watching the egret. When you looked at it without binoculars or a scope, it looked kind of like it had a little man in its beak.

One of the pleasures of this trip was that we also had Jonathan Rosen along with us. He was a keynote speaker for the festival. I unfortunately missed it, I had to meet a field trip at 4:30am the night he spoke and went to bed way early. He was very understanding and it was great to spend some birding time with him. I haven't read Life of the Skies, but I really want to now. I hope we get to see him more on the bird festival circuit.

Anhinga vs Fish

Well, my adventure in Florida is winding to a close. This morning, I'm packing, starting to deal with email, and sorting photos for blog entries about the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival. I have over 1300 to sift through from the festival from beautiful places like scrub oak habitat to unique places like a landfill in Daytona. Many more blog entries about the magic of birding in Florida are to follow in the coming week. For the moment, I share these FABulous photos from my buddy Clay Taylor took of an anhinga trying to eat a fish that is entirely too big for it:

I ran into him during one of our field trips to Viera Wetlands. We were trying to get our field trip a least bittern. I saw Clay up ahead photographing like crazy and wondered if he had it. When I approached, he pointed our on the water and I could see what had peaked his interest. Check ou the above anhinga and the size of fish between its beak! Here's a zoom in:

Our field trip had watched a few anginga and cormorants with fish seemingly too big for their mouth and eventually swallow them. Clay had been on this anhing for quite some time and it was getting tired. The fish flipped wildly to escape being eaten, but the anhinga was determined not to give up such a prize catch.

The anhinga valiantly tried to swallow the enormous fish, several times, but alas, the fish would not be swallowed. No matter how wide the anhinga would make its mouth, the fish would simply not fit through. The anhinga held on to the fish and put it under water to try and get a better grip, but the fish won out.

Here is an upclose shot of the Gulp FAIL. Clay got some fantastic shots of this scene digiscoping with his SLR camera and scope!

A Double Bittern Day!

I think this male red-bellied woodpecker was feeling what quite a few of us were feeling Tuesday morning at Viera Wetlands (aka Viera Sewage Treatment Facility) during the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival. BRRRRRRR (a cold snap has hit Florida creating temperatures in the low thirties with wind chills in the twenties) Br! I left a good chunk of my hardcore winter gear at home and kind of regretted it. My toes and fingers suffered. Most of the stores were out of winter gear, but you can usually find some good winter stuff if you look in the hunting section of a Walmart. Reluctantly, I headed to the Big W and I was not disappointed. I found some sensible gloves and even my favorite Hot Hands warmers in the hunting section. So, all should be good when it's the same temperature in Florida on Thursday morning as it is in Minneapolis and I'm out hunting for red-cockaded woodpeckers.

But it was not all cold and suffering, how could it be when our field trip group ended up having a double bittern day and I even got a lifer - a limpkin (above). Of course, now that I have finally seen a limpkin, a bird that has eluded me at all previous opportunities--I'm seeing them regularly now. At one point, we passed someone's yard in a trailer park and it there was a limpkin having a stand off with a black-bellied whistling duck on their dock. That's not the only bird that was in this person's yard--there was also a big flock of sandhill cranes. How's that for a yard list?

We saw quite a few great birds, but the highlight for many was the least bittern that Jeff Gordon found for the group--it was so, so tiny. Looked to be about the size of my fist. Because we were so close and there were many cars jockeying for position around our tour bus, we opted to stay inside to get a look at the bird.

I was amazed that I was able to contort my scope's tripod in my seat to get a somewhat in focus photo, but I did manage. It's a young one, since the back is not black, but he was a cutey.

Another participant on our trip managed to find the larger American bittern blending in perfectly well with the surrounding vegetation. I put my scope on it for others to see and at first they would say, "I don't think it's there." Then a few seconds later, much like looking at a magic eye puzzle, they would exclaim, "I SEE it!"

I'm writing this post on a Wednesday night to be published on blogger Thursday morning. I have to meet our next field trip bus at 4:30am and looking at my clock, I need to hit the hay.

Hot Gratuitous American Bittern Action

Well, I thought getting some great head shots of the wood stork was going to be the high point of my trip, but hands down, it was the American bittern action, I captured at Viera Wetlands yesterday. Now, the American bittern is a bird I can see in my home state of Minnesota, but not easily and certainly not in good photography light. One thing I am fascinated with birds is how birds respond to human activity in different states. In Florida, the birds are totally mellow: osprey right on the street lamps like red-tailed hawks. Herons and egrets will let you get within 10 feet of them. We have some of these same species in Minnesota, but they are way more cagey--it's just an interesting regional difference.

Bitterns are birds that skulk around in reeds, using their stripey plumage to hide in the reeds--it's hard to find them, you generally hear them more than you see them and when you do see them, it's usually when they are slinking back into the reeds and out of your sight. When I got the above photo of a bittern disappearing into some vegetation with the sun behind it, I considered myself very lucky.

Then we got to this spot and a fellow birder mentioned to our group that there was an American bittern in here that is a real ham. I'm a ham, I would even say chickadees and nuthatches are hams. But bitterns as hams? They are more of the Howard Hughes type. But, the light was perfect, I had a flash card to fill and couldn't resist a chance to digiscope a bittern. We couldn't see it and buddy Clay Taylor said that we were probably going to have to walk around and just work it. Clay and I assumed our positions with our scopes and our cameras and waited. Less than sixty seconds later, we saw the bittern.

It skulked out of the grasses and I got this photo. I thought this was pretty darned exciting and very bloggable--and a good representation of how you usually see a bittern through a scope or binoculars. Part of the bird and obscured by vegetation. I congratulated myself in my head for a digiscope well done. But, it didn't end there.

The bird continued to search the water at the base of the vegetation for fish and seemed completely oblivious to the pack of humans on the nearby road freaking out at how close we were to an American bittern.

Look at that! An almost completely unobscured bittern face? I felt like the luckiest girl in the world!

The bittern eventually came out fairy close to the road. If you look at the above photo, you see the end of the barrel of my spotting scope and at the top center of the photo is the bittern. I was dying at this point. It was sunny, the temperature was in the upper seventies, a slight breeze was blowing and I was watching a really cool and generally hard to see bird.

The birder we met on the road was right, this bird was a ham. Here it is point its head up to camouflage as a helicopter few over (or maybe it was simply watching the helicopter).

And then it poked its head out and continued its "relentless warfare on fish." Some of the members of our group were not birders and did find the bittern cool, but I'm sure they were wondering why Clay and I just planted ourselves for the better part of an hour photographing the bittern.

The bird was so close, I had a tough time getting anything but head shots, so I moved myself further back and was able to start getting the whole body in the frame. What amazed me was look at the size of the head in relation to the body--tiny and skinny head governing a large body in back.

At a couple of point, it puffed up slightly. I wondered what that was about. I once was fortunately enough to watch a bittern give it's call and it's really interesting. They inhale air first and their bodies blow up like a big brown beach ball and the bird deflates as it gives that pumper call. Here, it puffed up once? Is it giving some kind of call that is inaudible to me? What was it about? Still, so much to learn.

Here's a final photo, check out the wet feathers on the chin--I saw this bird get at least five fish, who knows how much it was getting as it would periodically disappear into the grasses. Though the above is the last photo, below is a video of the bittern. There is a spot on the lens and yes, I am aware of the spot. I've been uploading some photos to You Tube in the last twenty-four hours to blog about this week. Some people subscribe to the videos on there and see them right away. And a few have felt the need to let me know that I have a spot on my lens. It's a big spot and fairly obvious and it amuses me to know end that the commentors feel the need to let me know, on the off chance I didn't see it. So, as you're watching this, yes, I know that there is a spot on the lens.

Oh! And I forgot to mention, you will hear fish crows calling in the back ground--sounds like a crow that swallowed a kazoo going "ha ha". Also, watch how the bittern wiggles back and forth--that's how it's focusing on what it's about to stab it at. Alas, the flash card I was using when I took the video filled up and the camera stopped filming. Immediately after the video stops, the bittern nailed a fish.