I spent an extended Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend on St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. While there I did some birding. A new life bird for me was the Magnificent Frigatebird. The males are all black, the females have a white chest, and the immature birds have a white head and chest.
While down in the Everglades, I had a nice view of two White Ibises eating for about half an hour. I never realized what a hard time an Ibis would have eating a long worm. It was a struggle, as the worm did all it could not to be dinner.
I’m starting to catch up with my photographs from Florida. Here are some pictures of an American Kestrel and some Wood Storks taken around Flamingo.
I finally made it to over 200 life birds today, with the 200th being a Bald Eagle and the 201st being a Common Merganser. The pictures weren’t that good today, but I’m having fun expanding my range outside of Central Park.
Red-Shouldered Hawks are rare visitors to Central Park, so it was a pleasure to see them in the Everglades over my Christmas/New Year’s break while visiting Florida.
The first four photographs are of a juvenile bird, then some of two adults. The last two are of an attack on an egret by a Red-shouldered Hawk at the Shark Valley Visitor’s Center. (I was the only one among about 30 visitors who noticed the attack. I guess people being unaware of nature isn’t only limited to the city!)
There have been two Snowy Owls hanging around one of the barrier islands on the south shore of Long Island for the past week. I’ve been having bad luck finding life birds this fall. But today, I found this species within five minutes of parking my car!
(There have been reports of them being harassed by birders and photographers this week, so be careful if you see them. A Park Ranger told me that today, a photographer chased one of the owls down the beach. The owls are down here looking for food because food ran out further north. They’re in a stressful period of there lives. If they fly off, you’ve gotten too close. Please don’t chase after them. We’ve got to do our best to welcome and protect these birds.)
The bird I saw was most likely a young male.
