This afternoon, the sky was bright and the wind speed was low so it wasnt too cold outside so I decided to go out for a drive around the farm fields near where I live in Hershey to search for raptors. And I needed an excuse to try out my new camera! I spotted a Red-tailed Hawk about a mile after I left my house and pulled over to take a few photos of it soaring around. Just when I was about to get back in my car, I spotted two adult Bald Eagles soaring overhead! Since they were right next to each other, I could compare the sizes and they were for sure a male and female. Where were they from? The nearest nest is at least 10 miles away….
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Yesterday at the Duck Pond, the lighting was excellent for digiscoping and I got a few of my best shots ever of Ruddy Ducks. I have to take advantage of good lighting conditions because I don’t have the snazzy 400mm lens that Alex just got. But enough about my jealousy… Sleeping Ruddy Duck I particularly like the detail on the feathers, a very complex mix of dark and light feathers. Ruddy Ducks are probably one of my favorite ducks because they seem to have so much personality. Maybe it’s because of their tail that is always sticking up, or how they swim around with their necks sticking out like the photo below. They are always comical to watch.
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So maybe you are still looking for something to get that birder on your Christmas list. Well, lucky for you we have a couple suggestions because we care. Birds of Borneo: Brunei, Sabah, Sarawak, and Kalimantan by Susan Myers. This is a great looking field guide that was published in 2009 by Princeton University Press. According to the back cover, this is the first field guide to comprehensively cover the varied bird species of Borneo. This is a beautiful field guide with close to 1,600 illustrations of more than 630 species. The introduction gives a nice overview of the bird life of the region, pointing out similarities with the Thai-Malay Peninsula and Sumatra. There are some very interesting habitats to bird in Borneo, particularly the lowland dipterocarp where bird diversity reaches its peak on the island.
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Today I got up early and drove down to Block 18 and 20 in Southern Lancaster County for this years SoLanCo Christmas Bird Count. I started off the day meeting up with Josh Lefever and trying to call some owls in before the sun came up. It was my first time ever in this area of Lancaster and so I was quite unfamiliar with the territory…so, no owls. But! The day got better. At 7:00am, Josh and I met up with 6 other birders and we drove over to our first birding location. We walked around a corn field edge and tried to spot birds. It as freezing cold and I think that was keeping the birds quite, but as the sun got higher in the sky, birds became more active.
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Today was my first day back in Hershey for winter break. Chris and Mark Markiewicz and their friend Paul, and I went down to Conowingo Dam to see if there were good numbers of Bald Eagles around. We all went last year at this time and saw hundreds of eagles, this year was much different. We ended up seeing a total of only 15 eagles; 7 adults, 4 4th years, 2 3rd years, 1 2nd year, and 1 juvenile. Nonetheless, we had a great time watching the eagles and other birds. I also just bought myself a new camera, so this was the perfect opportunity to try it out. I purchased the Canon T2i and the 400mm f/5.6L lens; below are some of the photos I took today.
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I easily found the male Harlequin Duck today, still associating with a small flock of Mallards. Viewing was easy, either across from the feed mill or climbing up the bank along Pennsylvania Ave. See the map below. The flock was easily spooked and would fly upriver for short distances before slowly floating back down. Harlequin Duck location. The P signifies an easy parking spot and the blue area is where the Harlequin Duck was seen around noon.
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American Tree Sparrows were everywhere at Bald Eagle State Park yesterday. The boat marina and the new lodge both had flocks of at least fifteen birds. I managed to take a couple digiscoped shots out the car window that I liked.
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Using the website Wordle.net, I made a word cloud from our recent posts here on The Nemesis Bird. The size of the word indicates how many times it showed up in our posts.
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For the past week a Rough-legged Hawk has been hanging around CREP fields along highway 220 in Centre County. The habitat is beautiful and loaded with raptors but unfortunately all of the property is owned by the state prison. The best area to view the hawk from was along 220 which has tons of traffic, so all in all, the hawk really couldn’t have picked a worse place for birders to see it from. Luckily, it seems the Roughleg has chosen a new, more convienent location to be viewed from. If you take exit 78 off 220 and follow the road south, there is a gravel pull-off near an entrance road to the prison and an old barn. From here the Roughleg hunts close to the road on the east side. Anna Fasoli (http://annafasoli.blogspot.
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Today Drew Weber, Josh Lefever, and I birded Bald Eagle State Park from 12:00pm until 3:45pm. It was my last day birding in Centre County for this year and I really wanted to find a few more species I hadnt seen yet in the county. The State Park was pretty exciting with a nice assortment of waterfowl in decent numbers and plenty of other species. A massive raft of 252 Common Mergansers was neat to see along with 9 other waterfowl species. Two Golden Eagles were also a treat. They were seen at quite a distance migrating south along the Bald Eagle Ridgeline.
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