Birdchick

Last night I tried to take pictures of Jupiter through my spotting scope again.  A few days ago, I had pretty good luck getting the moons around Jupiter, but I wanted to try and get the cloud bands on the planet itself.  I didn’t have the best of luck.  I was out at Mr. Neil’s  [ Read More ]

Monday was our first flight out for our annual fall waterfowl surveys on the upper Mississippi.  This is our initial flight to get back into the swing of things, make sure our maps are correct and to get a refresher course on identifying and counting waterfowl while flying over them.  Last year my route went  [ Read More ]

If you follow astronomy, Jupiter is very bright in the evening sky.  I thought I would see what I could do with my Swarovski spotting scope.  I aimed it and at 20 power magnification, I could easily make out the planet Jupiter and four of its moons.  I was even able to digiscope it with  [ Read More ]

I always love when I catch bees making little mistakes with m camera–like falling when landing.  It happens a lot.  Bees are not perfect creatures. I headed out to the hives to check my frame situation.  A friend works at a local nature center and they need a few extra frames full of honey for  [ Read More ]

I was watching some mallards at Wood Lake Nature Center this week.  As I took note of how far they were in their eclipse plumages (male mallards resemble females in their late summer molt, they lose their flight feathers and need to blend in rather than fly away from predators).  Some are almost complete, while  [ Read More ]

Provided there isn’t major flooding tonight in the Twin Cities, I’ll be at the Minnesota Valley NWR for MRVAC Meeting giving a slide show and telling stories about birding in Panama.  There are photos and video that haven’t made it into the blog–I don’t think I told the bat story in here. Here’s the event  [ Read More ]

Probably not, but intrepid burrowing owl sure did try. The above Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is of a burrowing owl that tried to set up a territory mini-golf course on Royal Caribbean International’s “Oasis of the Seas” last Saturday.  The ship was about to depart Port Everglades for the high seas when a  [ Read More ]