The Nemesis Bird

Montclair Hawkwatch is a hawkwatch run by New Jersey where I spent a spring as the counter.

Here are some of my attempts at catching the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher through my scope. Seems that despite my best efforts, this guy was always able to hide behind at least a little bit of tree stuff. The last shot is my favorite, catching it mid-hover as it is going up to snag an insect off [...]

With spring migration in full swing now, and no nasty weather to stop it sightings have really picked up. I was lucky enough to go home to Pennsylvania for a day and was able to find 7 species of warbler close to Lake Ontelaunee, one of my favorite places to bird in my county. My [...]

Just to whet your appetite on what’s to come, here is my somewhat poor digishot of a Louisiana Waterthrush. I thought that putting everything in b&w except for the warbler itself would jazz it up a bit. I know that there have been recent controversies about doctoring photos but you have to remember that this [...]

It appears that Broad-winged Hawks are finally starting to arrive. We had our first double-digit day yesterday and hopefully as this weather clears we will get an excellent flight. Here are the numbers so far for the season.

Daily Raptor Counts: as of Apr 11, 2007

Species
Day’s Count
Month Total
Season Total

Black Vulture
0
1
15

Turkey Vulture
10
55
258

Osprey
5
40
66

Bald Eagle
0
0
1

Northern Harrier
2
6
15

Sharp-shinned Hawk
9
43
120

Cooper’s Hawk
2
18
60

Northern Goshawk
0
0
1

Red-shouldered [...]

The Mourningcloak (Nymphalis antiopa) is a medium-sized (2-4 inchwingspan) butterfly which is easily identified by the yellow trailing edge to its wings. On the inner edge of the yellow border there are iridescent blue spots making it very striking and distinctive. It belongs to the family Nymphalidae which are known as the ‘brush-footed butterflies’. Their [...]

Some days at the hawk watch the weather is less than ideal and the the hawks are not flying. These are the times when it is particularly fun to watch the other local birds behavior. Since I am stationary most of the day, the birds become used to my presence and settle down to enjoy [...]

American Kestrel, photo by copeg.
Today was the day of the American Kestrel. It started at 10 am and by the time I finished counting at 6 pm, 28 of these light weight, Microtus-killing machines had flown past. That was counting 10 in the last hour, and four birds in the last few minutes of that [...]

When the weather isn’t right for a good raptor flight, its a good chance to put in a little time digiscoping. Unfortunately today was particularly cloudy and the lighting was not optimal but it gave me a good chance to practice with manual focus. I set the camera to infinite focus and simply focus with [...]