Good Morning My Fellow Birding Kosacks
sunrise in Corcovado, Costa Rica
Backyard Birding
I love my backyard birding. We get tons of cardinals, goldfinches, chickadees, nuthatches. Blue Jays are common visitors along with sapsuckers and doves. Occasionally, an eagle soars overhead. Sometimes hawks look to make lunch out of a songbird. And once a year or so, a pileated woodpecker will decimate the dead limbs of our silver maple.
pileated woodpecker
Lots of pretty pictures on the other side....
But I really don't get out much to go birding in the neighborhood. I really should. We have lots of pheasants and wild turkeys just a stone's throw from my house. Not to mention the mergansers that nest each year in a pond just down the street.
No. I'm a rather bad birder. Vacation seems to be the only time that I can get out there. Even that is a relatively new development. A dozen years or so ago, I bought my wife a couple bird books. We started taking them with us as we traveled the U.S. (mostly the west). One thing led to another and we started to note which birds we observed and where we saw them (Ferruginous Hawk, 1/20/02 west of Hondo, TX, Hwy 90). Then I started buying cameras and big lenses (well, not so big when compared to the monstrosities some of my friends use.) Now I'm afraid I'm a lost cause. When you take some 36 hours of plane rides and airports to travel to southern Africa and are just as excited to see a ground hornbill as a leopard, well that is just plain bird insanity.
So this diary is a rather vain accounting of some of the very cool birds I have had the good fortune to observe in my travels over the past ten years or so.
Cool Bird #1
In prepping for this diary I have combed through a ton of old vacation photos. Trips to Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, Denali. Trips taken before digital and before I had a slr or dslr camera. And I'm finding that I'm getting shut out on bird shots. I have a fuzzy roadrunner in Arizona and a very distant coot in one of the great western parks. But not really anything worth publishing in this diary. The limitations of the old film point and shoots. I have lots of great bird memories but no photographic proof. The exception being some captive birds at the Jurong Bird Park in Singapore.
Cool Bird #2
Shoebill Stork
And speaking of birds in captivity. The following two were viewed at an aviary right smack in the middle of Hong Kong. The aviary is quite impressive and is a welcome retreat from the hustle and bustle (and godawful pollution) of central Hong Kong.
Cool Birds 3 & 4
bali mynah
ruddy cuckoo dove
Canadian Rockies
So let's move on to 2003. I bought my first Nikon slr (single lens reflex) film camera. I bought it the very day we set off for the Canadian Rockies. In the summer of 2003 I was very pure in my belief that film would always be superior to digital.
Yet, the bird photos still left a lot to be desired.
Clark's Nutcracker
Avocets in Saskatchewan
On the other hand, if you will indulge me a non-bird photo, I did get some nice shots of the bigger mammals.
Costa Rica
Later that year we decided on a Christmas trip to Costa Rica. It was paradise in many many ways, but the real gift that Costa Rica gave us was a full blown case of bird fever. Toucans, macaws, quetzels, flycatchers, tanagers, trogans and a dozen or so hummingbirds.
Costa Rice is the American mecca of birding. Because of it's unique location and temperate climate it catches migrating birds from both South and North America. And it hosts many splendid year round residents.
scarlet macaw
toucan
anhinga and little blue heron
Florida
I've been traveling to Florida since the early 70s. But I never cared much for the birds until this millenium. The Royal Palm boardwalk is a fabulous spot to see all manner of wading birds along with storks, kites and vultures.
little blue heron
ibis
cormorant
red shouldered hawk
purple gallinule
night heron
tr-colored heron
The gators are impressive too.
Galapagos
It seems to me that everyone gushes about the Galapagos and that everyone who has not been has these islands at or near the top of their travel wishlist. Are the blue-footed boobies really that cute, do the sea lions really take time out of their busy schedules to play with the human interlopers, do hammerhead sharks really ply these equatorial waters and what is with the tortoise fetish? I'd always had some idle curiousity with regard to the Galapagos, but it was never a dream trip. Becky, on the other hand, let's just say that the prospect of a week on a yacht combined with the opportunity to view dozens of endemic Galapagos birds....well, that is as close to heaven as she could imagine. So off we went. And I must say that I am truly a convert to the cult of the Galapagos. It is everything they say it is, and more.
frigate birds
yellow warbler
brown pelican
nazca booby
swallowtailgull
galapagos hawk
whimbrel
bluefooted booby
galapagos penguin
Ireland
Unfortunately, Ireland was mostly a washout. I've never experienced such weather. Winds that would blow down trees and take roofs off here in the states were merely a summer squall in the emerald island. The wind and waves kept us off the Skellig Islands and prevented landing on the Blaskets (where the remnants off the Spanish Armada met its ultimate doom). But the scenery was stunning and the Guinness was fantastic.
At the cliffs of Moher we did see a rookery (gulls, kittiwakes, gannets) and hundreds of puffins from a great distance.
rookery (can you see the specks all lined up? those specks are birds)
puffins (they are there, trust me)
Otherwise, in Galway, we saw a gull standing in the stream and on the Aran Islands a gull took refuge a 1000 feet above the raging ocean.
gull in galway
aran island gull
The livestock was plentiful and cooperative.
moo
Botswana
Hands down the funnest thing I have ever done in my life is the photo safari we took in Botswana. We'd wake an hour before dawn and get oatmeal by the fire, shivering all the while as night temps dropped well into the 30s. We'd head out in the land rovers about a half hour before sunrise and then we'd have about 5 hours of wildlife viewing. Back to camp for lunch and a nap and then we'd head out for 3-4 hours of late afternoon wildlife viewing which, of course, included sunset and maybe a few cocktails to celebrate another great day. Back to camp for dinner under the stars (and you have not seen stars until you have been in the midst of the Kalahari with no artificial light for hundreds and hundreds of miles) and then a couple hours of storytelling around the campfire. Multiply by 11 days plus a night at Victoria Falls. Pure bliss.
blue-eared starling
white-fronted bee-eater
blacksmith lapwing
egret
little bee-eater
kori bustard
purple roller
grey hornbill
brown snake eagle
pied kingfisher
jacana
The Bravest Bird Of All
yellow billed oxpecker
To end an Amazonian Sunset
