Friday Bird Blogging: The Salisbury Egret Roost

Photo: Glossy Ibis in Flight

In Salisbury, MA, on Route 1 just South of 110 there is an amazing sight going on this month. Each night, a large variety of wading birds has been coming in to roost communally. From about 5-7pm you can start with a small number of birds and watch as they fly in, bringing the numbers up to several hundred. In one night, I was able to find:

• a few Great Blue Herons;
• over a hundred Great Egrets;
• a few Little Blue Herons;
• Several Green Herons;
• a pair of Black-crowned night herons;
• Dozens of Snowy Egrets;
• a group of eight Glossy Ibises (the one pictured here is one in flight, coming into the roost).

On another night, I also spotted a variety of small shorebirds, including least sandpipers and spotted sandpipers. This is a really great show. The roost is positioned so you can watch it at sunset, with the sun setting behind you, providing a really nice light for photography as well as general viewing. Some of the birds are close, but most are further out so it's good to bring binoculars or a scope.

If you're into birding at all, it also provides for great opportunity to learn the differences between immature little blue herons and snowy egrets. They're both about half the size of a great egret and predominantly white birds, but there are some key differences that can be put in clear contrast here, as the snowys tend to hang out at the same spots as the little blues.

This won't be here much longer; these birds will all be migrating soon so get down there when you can. This sort of roosting site is commonly visible in some areas, but in New England it's rare to see a roost site with so many different kinds of birds making themselves so very and obviously visible for an extended period. And be sure not to just look at the roost, but to check the skies as they come in because watching them land is a great part of the show. Most birds come in from the left side, but a few will travel from the South as well.

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Related: Salisbury Egret Roost photo gallery.

Friday Bird Blogging: Ruby-Throated Hummingbird Revisited

There's been some great hummingbird activity at the feeders as of late, and I just want to take a few minutes to highlight some of it:

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All three pictures will bring you to larger versions when you click on them.

Apparently, I can sell my music here now

Friday Bird Blogging: Cedar Waxwings

I've been taking pictures of Cedar Waxwings for quite some time now, but this is the first time I actually captured the reason they've got their name: those red wingtips which look like they're made from wax are where their names come from. They are fairly plentiful in Vermont and feed almost entirely on fruit (though once, for some inexplicable reason, one showed up at our feeder to eat on sunflower seed).

Here's one of Cornell's cool Cedar Waxwing facts:

Cedar Waxwings with orange instead of yellow tail tips began appearing in the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada beginning in the 1960s. The orange color is the result of a red pigment picked up from the berries of an introduced species of honeysuckle. If a waxwing eats the berries while it is growing a tail feather, the tip of the feather will be orange.

Of course, now that I know this, I'll have to go looking for an orange-tailed one just to get the variety.

Friday Bird Blogging: Yellow Bellied Sapsucker

I have to admit: I had no idea what this was when I took the picture. From a distance, I knew it didn't look like our usual (Hairy and Downy) woodpeckers but even though it had a shape like the sapsucker, its markings were all off. It turns out this is a juvenile. We had several in our yard that day and I completely missed them. I'm particularly happy to have gotten this shot because I'd only had one sapsucker picture in the past and it wasn't very good.

I've made a lot of changes to the photo site as of late, mostly in terms of layout. Please, if you have a moment, check it out. Not only is it all reorganized (I moved a lot of the text and info below the fold to focus more on the pictures themselves), I've set up a function where end users can rate the pictures so viewers can see how much other viewers like what's up there. I will eventually set it up so that the pictures can be ordered by rating (highest to lowest) when viewing, so everyone gets to see the highest rated pictures first, so having good data as to who likes what is really helpful for this.

Julie Waters e-notes: Thu, August 9, 2007

For those of you who don't know-- I recently had a theft of a lot of camera equipment. Details on that are at:

http://reasonandbrimstone.blogspot.com/2007/07/well-that-was-interesting-weekend.html

I'm not writing to talk about that, but that does provide some context for what I am talking about. I've finally replaced everything I had that got stolen that I wanted to replace -- I had a couple items that I didn't think were as useful as I thought they'd be when I purchased them, but most of what I had before I replaced. The hardest thing was a particular brand and model of teleconverter which, it turns out, took me some time to track down but I eventually found one and it only cost half what I originally paid for the one that got stolen, so that works out well.

I made some better choices this time; I had a low-end Pentax lens that I had used for wide-angle work that was never that great a lens, so I replaced it with a higher-end Sigma that's REALLY nice. It's how I got this picture:

http://juliesmagiclightshow.com/?pic=2009

It turns out this was all a lot more expensive than I'd thought. The replacements cost me over a grand, and insurance is only covering a portion of that. The replacement window on the car was another $200 over that. So it's been a bit of a mess. And now I'm paranoid about leaving anything in my car, so there's that, too, where I lug my camera equipment around with me wherever I go now. I'll get over that eventually but now I feel sort of stupid doing it even though I know I need to.

So... photography's good again if not a little stressful from time to time. And on to music...

Music's interesting right now. My mind's really spinning with new ideas and I'm getting all sorts of thoughts about how to work them all out. I'm seriously considering a new CD, focused primarily on trio work between baritone, banjo and six-string, working on my usual mixtures of stuff. I'm getting a new pickup for my baritone so I can do more performing with it and I'm trying to find a compatible pickup for the six-string banjo as well.

In the meantime, I don't have a lot of other news. I'm not actively seeking gigs right now, but if I find them, I'll be glad to do them. I'm playing from time to time. My Tuesdays are going to be free again after next week, which is nice, because it means I'll be able to start doing the song circles in Putney and those with Kindred Folk again. I've missed those events and I'm glad to have the time opening up.

In the meantime, we're taking a week off at the end of the month to mellow out, hanging out at a house on Cape Ann, doing bird photography and whale watches, so you'll see a lot more updates on the photography part of my site than on the music. In the meantime, once I get my baritone guitar back, I'll be updating podcasts and other music stuff with solo baritone work as well.

Hope everyone is well.
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More info:

http://juliewaters.com/

Julie's photography:

http://juliesmagiclightshow.com/
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Upcoming events for Julie Waters
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Sunday, August 12th 2nd Sundays Song Circle (tentative) at RAMP Gallery; Bellows Falls, VT

Sunday, September 9th 2nd Sundays Song Circle (tentative) at RAMP Gallery; Bellows Falls, VT

Sunday, October 14th 2nd Sundays Song Circle (tentative) at RAMP Gallery; Bellows Falls, VT

Friday Bird Blogging: The Spotted Sandpiper

The appearance of the spotted sandpiper varies dramatically. The picture shown is in non-breeding plumage, but you can see the strong breeding plumage in this shot.

These are extremely common birds, nesting throughout the Northern United States, and can often be noticed from a distance by their repeated bobbing motion. They walk a few steps, bob up and down, look for food, and then do it again. No one seems to know why they do this, but it certainly helps birders in the field know whether they've got a spottie.

Friday Bird Blogging: Purple Martin

On the west coast, Purple Martins will nest in natural cavities, but for whatever reason (the type of habitat which was taken over, perhaps?) on the East, they tend to nest almost exclusively in birdhouses.

This, of course, makes for nice photographic opportunity. You can get good pictures of these birds at their houses without causing real trouble. This one was taken at Parker River Wildlife Refuge.

Another cool fact about the Purple Martin (both these cool facts were taken from Cornell's absolutely awesome bird guide site) is that Purple Martins will nest in communities and not only defend their own nests, but defend each others' as well.

Well that was an interesting weekend

We'd planned a mellow weekend-- heading to Parker River for the evening, doing some birding and staying over to get there first thing in the morning. The evening was -- got our first sightings of least terns, as well as a least bittern, which is not at all an easy bird to spot.

On the way back from the hotel, there were a bunch of people pulled over on the side of the road. When I realized what they were looking at, I immediately said to pull over. I was so startled that I didn't even know how to explain it, though it was really quite simple: a roosting site with more egrets together than I'd ever seen in my life. This picture is just a small portion of it:

http://juliesmagiclightshow.com/?pic=1958

We stuck around until it was too dark to see anything else and then headed to the hotel.

Usually, I leave most of my camera equipment in the car overnight. I did that this time, but I needed to clean my camera, so I put the smallest lens on it, so it would be easier to carry. Then, really as an afterthought, I decided to carry up my big lens as well-- just in case it needed cleaning. I left my camera bag in the car, which had a lot of equipment in it-- two other lenses, plus a pair of specialized wide-angle lens adapters, which are basically lenses of their own, an external flash, a battery grip, four specialized batteries, the charger which uses these batteries, and a bunch of other small (but not cheap) items.

When we got up to the room, I realized I'd left my iPod in the front seat, and thought I should go back down and grab it, mainly because I needed to charge it overnight for the ride home after the morning's birding. When I went down to grab it, I thought about bringing my camera bag up, mainly because it had some of the cleaning supplies in it, but thought it would slow us down in the morning so I decided against it. Up in the room, I realized I'd left the glucometer in that bag as well, and almost ran back to get it, but I figured I'd be fine overnight without it.

The next morning, we were up bright and early, ready to get out to the refuge while things were still interesting. We got ready, showered, had breakfast, etc. I ran down to the car to get a few items down to make the next trip easier.

I dropped my laptop and bag in the trunk and was about to run back downstairs when I went to drop something in the front.

That's when I spotted the shattered glass: the front passenger window had been smashed open. If I'd had left my primary lens in the car, it probably would have been stolen. As luck would have it, it was safe in the hotel with us. Only one item was stolen: the camera bag, which contained about $1500 worth of equipment. Everything in the bag can be replaced, and some of it is stuff I'd seriously been thinking about getting rid of and selling off on eBay but this obviously pretty much killed the rest of the weekend. My camera takes specialized batteries and I had one in the camera which I'd been using all the previous day and four in the bag, along with the charger. I had taken over 1400 pictures on a single battery charge and I knew there wasn't much left. I had deliberately not recharged the battery because I wanted to find out just how many pictures I could take on a single battery charge. So not only wouldn't it do much good to go back to the island for more bird photography, we had a car with a broken window and had to put a lot of work into cleaning it up so it was safe to drive.

So, in short, our weekend was cut short and, until the new battery charger arrives (no one locally sells them so I had to do mail order), I won't be taking many pictures. I'm getting my car fixed tomorrow morning so I can actually drive around again.

In the meantime, I'm thinking about what lenses were stolen and how I'd like to go about replacing them. It's not as though the lenses that got stolen were top-notch. So I have to think through what sort of photograph I've been doing, what interests me in terms of future photography and what equipment I need. I've still got the two best lenses I've ever owned-- my Sigma 50-500mm and the Pentax pancake lens-- both excellent lenses and for their own purposes, but the Sigma is cumbersome and the pancake lens is useful for some very specialized situations. When I'm on nature walks where I won't be doing any distance photography, I've used a simple 100-400mm lens which works easily and quickly and is very lightweight. It saves me the trouble of having to use the tripod and keeps my back a lot happier than when I use the larger lens. So I could replace that lens with an identical one, and I may do so.

I used to have the simple Pentax 18-55mm zoom lens, which I liked, but didn't love. So do I want to go back to that lens or get something with a wider angle option, or something which might weigh a little more but have better glass density and be better for more professional work, such as the Sigma 17-70mm, which is also a very close-range macro lens as well?

Although this particular incident was not fun, and certainly leaves me a bit frustrated, there's something nice about having these options -- the choice to update my equipment without the complications of trying to organize everything I've had. I know I'm not replacing my 2x teleconverter-- I've never been happy with it and should have returned it when I first purchased it, but missed the window.

I'm trying to find a replacement for the 1.4x teleconverter which I liked quite a bit, but I'm having real trouble with that one-- stores that normally stock them are all out of stock; the one I used to own was a Tamron and it worked particularly well with my camera so I'm loath to change brands, even if I've heard great things about Sigma-- the Tamron was outstanding and I'd much rather find one just like it, even if it takes extra time to track it down.

This wasn't a -bad- weekend per se. I got some nice pictures, including two of birds I'd never seen before, and several of a really amazing sight:

http://juliesmagiclightshow.com/?&tc=58&keywords=&dte=2007-07-21

And now I get to take some time to really think about what photographic equipment I have and why I use it and sort it out from there.

So how was YOUR weekend?

Friday Bird Blogging: American Goldfinch

The American Goldfinch is mostly monogamous, but a number of females switch mates after producing a first brood. The first male takes care of the fledglings while the female goes off to start another brood with a different male.

--Cornell Lab of Ornithology

I don't have any comment about that. I just thought I'd throw it out there.

Goldfinches are plentiful birds and fun to take pictures of because their plumage varies from season to season so you can often get them in various forms of molt.

The picture shown is of one male screeching at the other. Below is a male and female, with the female in flight

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Friday Bird Blogging: The Black and White Warbler

This common warbler is not easy to spot at first; to an untrained eye it can easily be mistaken for a nuthatch or a downy woodpecker when moving about in trees. Seeing them is a real treat, however-- they move quickly up and down tree trunks, pulling insects from the bark and, having almost no displayed color, tend to present a nice contrast with the environment around them. Pictures of these birds remind me of art projects I used to do where I would take parts of the picture and desaturate them, removing the color from part of the picture, but leaving the rest intact.

Defending the Sanctity of Marriage

Meet Louisiana Republican David Vitter.

Loser!

Mass. bar flunker wants $9.75 million:

[...]
A man said he failed the Massachusetts bar exam because he refused to answer a question about same-sex marriage, and claims in a federal lawsuit the test violated his rights and targeted his religious beliefs.

The suit also challenges the constitutionality of same-sex marriage, which was legalized in Massachusetts in 2003.

Stephen Dunne, who is representing himself in the case and seeks $9.75 million, said the bar exam was not the place for a "morally repugnant and patently offensive" question addressing the rights of two married lesbians, their children and their property. He said he refused to answer the question because he believed it legitimized same-sex marriage and same-sex parenting, which is contrary to his moral beliefs.

Dunne, 30, was denied a license to practice law in May after scoring 268.866 on the exam, just shy of the 270 passing grade.
[...]

This is a very good piece of clarity as to what this guy's about: he thinks it violates his religious beliefs to be required to make factual statements about what the law is.

Friday Bird Blogging: The Belted Kingfisher

Watching this bird with this fish was a real treat. The Kingfisher didn't seem to know exactly what to do with it at first, and kept finding ways to turn it around in its beak while trying to sort out how to move it from beak to stomach without dropping it. It did eventually succeed, but it took some time.

I've been tracking a group of kingfishers hanging out in the same place for a couple weeks now. Clicking on the first links to thumbnails of a series of pictures of them. Clicking on the lower one gets you a larger version of that picture.

Julie Waters e-notes: Thu, July 5, 2007

A couple quick things: I'll be playing for a breast cancer benefit in Chester on the 14th. Details at:

http://juliewaters.com/gigs.php?details=442

I also have some new MP3s up since I last wrote from the Kindred Folk gig a few weeks ago. These are at:

http://juliewaters.com/mp3s.php

In particular, there's a nice new version of "Star of the County Down" there as well as an improvised blues piece that came out well, both with Michael Hertz playing some really nice stuff on them as well. The recording isn't the best quality but it does come across fairly well. More mp3s from that gig, as well as from anything else I record, will be added weekly for the next month or two. I'll be getting a new pickup for my banjo soon, so expect more banjo pieces in future mp3s as well.

Hope everyone's well; I'll leave you all with some of the pictures I've taken as of late. The link below will send you to thumbnails of all the pictures I've flagged as "favorites" on my photo site, including some really nice recent pictures of herons, dragonflies, baby ducks, kingfishers, some night photography, and a lot more:

http://juliesmagiclightshow.com/?pic=1815

Enjoy!
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More info:

http://juliewaters.com/

Julie's photography:

http://juliesmagiclightshow.com/
----------------------------------
Upcoming events for Julie Waters
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Sunday, July 8th 2nd Sundays Song Circle (tentative) at RAMP Gallery; Bellows Falls, VT

Saturday, July 14th Music in the Meadow at Motel in the Meadow; Chester, VT

Sunday, August 12th 2nd Sundays Song Circle (tentative) at RAMP Gallery; Bellows Falls, VT

Sunday, September 9th 2nd Sundays Song Circle (tentative) at RAMP Gallery; Bellows Falls, VT

Okay...

If I'm trying to find out about a product at amazon.com, I often get these little things at the bottom of the page which say "BETTER TOGETHER" and offer me a discount if I buy this item with another similar or related item.

So we've got this problem with rats that have suddenly shown up in our yards and I'm looking to get some form of live rat trap to capture them and release them elsewhere and trying to figure out what kind I need, etc. I look one up on amazon and after the listing, I get the following "better together" option:

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Rat traps... tax software... rat traps... accountants...

Even so, I think it's a stretch.

Friday Bird Blogging: Best. Heron. Picture. Ever

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I got nothin' to add here, except that clicking on the picture gets you the full-sized version.

New Version of Star of the County Down

I just uploaded a new version of "Star of the County Down" recorded last night at Common Ground w/Kindred Folk-- Michael Hertz was gracious enough to learn the song on the spot and do chords. MP3 link here or you can download lots more here

Friday Bird Blogging: The Green Heron

Green herons blend into the background so well that I have, on several occasions, found myself looking right at one and not even known it until they take flight. This is why I take such delight in seeing them out in the open. This particular picture was taken while the heron stood and looked around, exploring the water and provided me with a real treat, getting to see the heron from many angles and in many positions.

These birds are about half the size of the great blue heron, and tend to fly much faster and lower. They spook easily so any sighting is great, but a sighting where I get pictures like this is what I consider to be a very good sighting indeed.

Julie Waters e-notes: Tue, June 19, 2007

I'm sending this mid-month e-mail because I've got a new last-minute gig scheduled with Kindred Folk-- it's me with T. Breeze Verdant and Michael Hertz. It's this Friday (June 22nd) @7pm at Common Ground in Brattleboro.

This show is connected with Kindred Folk, which is a great new organization in Southeastern Vermont, designed to network musicians together for common good. I'd thought about trying to organize something like this a few years ago, but I never found the time to do so-- I'm glad someone else is taking on this sort of project. I'm looking forward to this gig in all sorts of ways and I hope a few of you can make it as well.

Also, for anyone interested, I've been making real strides with my bird photography, including some really nice pictures from a boat trip last week, and of a green heron a couple days ago. Links, etc., at http://juliesmagiclightshow.com/

Not much else to report right now-- still contemplating a new CD, but not having made much progress. Still working on learning Objective C to create a new piece of music software, but that's got a (long) ways to go yet as well-- programming is never easy and this is particularly complicated-- it involves an interaction of music theory, A/V interfaces and end user interfaces, all of which just make my head spin, but if I can get it to work, it will be worth it, in the sense that it will be nothing like anything I've ever heard before.

Hope everyone's well.