Monday, August 26, 2013

Condo birding update! - Aug 20 to 25





Aug 20th - well shucks... (this day was already covered)...

I was pretty darn sure I had a Neotropic Cormorant on the 19th.. Like really sure.. But it just isn't as much fun when everyone thinks you're nuts.. It was nice to get some better photos of the bird today:



Neotropic Freakin Cormorant... And all before 8am....  I also scored a juvenile Great Black-backed Gull and a superb adult Lesser Black-backed Gull before I went inside at 8:30am-ish...

Why did I go inside? Because they're cutting concrete on other peoples balconies (mine was the first completed, but others are still being worked on) - and I was getting coated in dust! BOO! I came inside, edited my cormorant photos.. Then went to have a shower around 9:30am... BUT GUESS WHAT - they shut the freakin WATER OFF in my building all day... WHAT the HECK...

Anyways, I wasn't that upset... Hard to get too worked up when you score a pretty insane rarity after multiple days of rising action and confusion leading up to it.... But the lack of water threw a wrench in my plans for the day... 


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Aug 21st - time to go back to work... 

Scored some early morning birds before work, but didn't have much time to watch. 2 American Black Ducks, Baltimore Oriole (high flyby), Common Loons etc 

Unfortunately the wind was strong from the south and the behaviour of the cormorants was totally different than previous days. Not sure if anyone even bothered to look, but it was not the same! (fewer birds, further away). 



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Aug 24th - home late in the evening. Went for a rollerblade. 2 Great Egrets now in confederation park. Scored a Semipalm Plover outside of the patch boundaries while on the path... 

A flyby Common Loon was all I could muster in the last 30 mins of daylight... 

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Aug 25th - an early-ish morning lakewatch turned up a few decent birds...

Red-throated Loon - 1
Common Loon - 6
Bonaparte's Gull - 4
Green-winged Teal - 10
numerous unidentified puddle ducks (and possibly some scoters)...
Long-tailed Duck - 2
Green Heron - 1  (NEW Condo bird!) 


Why do I take these horrible record photos of common birds? 

1. - Blog material... 
2. - "Mega rare bird record photo taking" practice



- I then went out for some PATCH birding! Boo-yah! 

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Confederation Park:



Edgelake Park: 



Also scored a 3rd Green Heron on the day, 2 Black-crowned Night-Herons and 3 MAP TURTLES on my patch while strolling around as well!


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When I got back to the condo around noon - there was a gentle east breeze with brought a juvenile (light morph)  LONG-TAILED JAEGER to do a west to east flyby... Not terribly far away, and rather high off the water. Sa-weet!

Before I left for the evening - I also had my first PEREGRINE Falcon in a while... A beauty of a juvenile, that I even managed some pictures of (from my balcony!) !!!


banded.. 


This blog post is kinda messed up because I keep seeing decent birds before i've finished writing... Just had a different juvenile Long-tailed Jaeger (3 hours after the first) - an intermediate morph juvenile this time...

Anything else? 

Anything else?

Anything? 

No?

ok... 

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