Where have I been? (Part II)
The last time I did a post called “Where have I been?”, it was because I took a few summer months off from birding and didn’t have anything good to report. This time I have a better excuse… I had a third child! Its been a wonderful few months since she was born, but this website became an unfortunate casualty of some serious time management issues. Long story short, I apologize for the lack of posts, but also I don’t, and I hope you can understand.
What a good time to pick back up though! The winter waterfowl is back in Toronto, and soon we’ll be seeing some early migrants. This week I wanted to just go through some of the highlights from the past three months, because the truth is that even though I didn’t have time to post on my blog, I DID make time for some birding.
First is a beautiful Barred Owl. This was just before our baby was born when I took my wife and 20 month old daughter for a gentle walk in the woods. We stumbled across a group of photographers who had spotted this owl, and we pointed it out to her. She said “Owl! Who Who!” and that was enough to catch the owl’s attention. I snapped a few pictures and we moved along, but the Barred Owl never took its eyes off my daughter as we walked away. It was magical for her, and therefore for me as well.
On paternity leave I had to run errands, and sometimes those errands took me near well known birding spots. While the dog was getting groomed I stopped by a pond to see this female Ruddy Duck. I had been trying to spot this species for nearly a year, but I always seemed to miss them. When I finally found this one I realized what the problem was… they’re tiny! In comparison to a Mallard, I would say it’s half the size or maybe less. This particular duck wasn’t as skiddish as the others that been avoiding me, and it let me get a nice closeup shot.
This Purple Sandpiper was spotted at my favorite waterfront park, and when I arrived and saw the lake I figured the report had to be wrong. There was no way a shorebird was going to be hanging out on the rocks with these big waves crashing into them. Sure enough, there it was, jumping around and finding things to eat as the waves pummelled the shore. It was such a delight watching this bird navigate the shoreline, I sat in the afternoon sun and watched this bird for an hour.
I love this picture of an American Kestrel. I brought my son with me to the nearby airport to go birding that day, and he fell asleep in the car, so I ended up just driving around instead of waking him up. When I saw this handsome bird on a fence, I pulled off the airport road to take some close up pictures. The bird was very patient and didn’t fly away, and my son never woke up. I should have bought a lottery ticket I was so lucky.
This Harlequin Duck has become a full-time winter resident of Toronto. It was challenging to find him, challenging to get close to him, and challenging to capture a photo that does this bird justice. I probably learned more about bird photography in one single day trying to get this picture right. His dark eye matches the rest of the blue on his head and is practically invisible in about 90% of the pictures I took. Still, despite all the photography frustration, that is one beautiful duck, and I’m glad I had the good fortune to spend 20 minutes admiring him from the shore.
This is a Snow Goose that lost his flock, and he decided to join a gaggle of Canada Geese. I have to be careful that I’m not just talking about my kids the entire time, but this is another one where I brought my daughter along. It was a bitter cold day and even though I had her bundled up, after about 10 minutes outside I could tell it was just too cold. As soon as I got her back in the car, of course100 geese flew in and landed in the pond. The white Snow Goose stuck out like a… well like a Snow Goose in a flock of Canada Geese. I ran over, took the picture, and then brought my daughter home for hot chocolate.
If you follow me on instagram (@ComeBirdingWithMe), you’ve seen this and several other pictures of the same Greater Scaup. I captured several different types of shots (like action shots, images with multiple birds, a stare down, etc.) and then asked people what they liked the best. Most liked the action shot, but my non-birder friends liked the profile shot more. I liked it too, so that’s what I added here. The biggest complaint about the profile shots though was that they can get a little boring…
And so I’ll end with another boring profile… are you bored yet? This is a Common Goldeneye. I tried so hard to get a good picture of these beautiful birds, and there were days I had the sunrise but no Goldeneye, and other days I had the Goldeneye but no sunrise. Finally I had a magical day where I had both. I crawled up to a ledge on the lake to not disturb the bird, and peeked over to get the shot I had been looking for. Mission accomplished!