I was admiring this photo of a great blue heron and its shadow when I remembered the poem “Heron Rises from the Dark, Summer Pond” by Mary Oliver: So heavy is the long-necked, long-bodied heron, always it is a surprise when her smoke-colored wings open and she turns from the […]
Category: Wildlife
Well Marked Tree Pipit – Sabkhat Al Fasl
Phil and I found a well-marked Tree Pipit at Sabkhat Al Fasl on Friday 2 October 2015. The bird was seen initially from some distance and caused some thoughts of Olive-backed Pipit. The bird appeared to have relatively plain upperparts, lacking streaking of Tree Pipit and sometimes looking olive toned but other times more brownish. […]
Gavilán mixto (Harris´s Hawk) Parabuteo unicinctus
De una longitud que ronda los 48/49 centÃmetros en el macho, y 43/56 cm. en la hembra, el Gavilán mixto, o Aguilita colorada, Guamón, o Peuco; es una especie de ave accipitriforme de la familia Accipitridae. Es un ave mediana que habita desde el sudoeste de EE. UU., todo el Perú, Bolivia, Uruguay y hasta […]
Juvenile Montagu’s Harrier – Ash Shargiyah Development Company Farm
Whilst birding Ash Shargiyah Development Company Farm on 11 September 2015 I saw a juvenile harrier over one of the fields. Luckily the bird flew closer and eventually flew right overhead allowing some good photographs to be taken. Juvenile Montagu’s and Pallid Harriers are difficult to identify with certainty at times and good views are […]
Tour of the east side
As well as visiting local farms on Friday, I toured some sites east of the city starting at Ayn Hamran. The stop at Ayn Hamran was relatively short but it is never uninteresting. Though there were no wintering birds seen yet apart from a couple of common sandpiper and a grey wagtail. It’s always a […]
Photo Tip #1
PHOTO TIP from Always An Adventure: This is our first post, and it’s about back-lit situations. Photographing back-lit subjects are never easy, and there are a few tricks to consider in situations like this. 1) you can use a fill flash/pop-up flash 2) you can get light from other sources, for example a white sheet […]
Central Winds Park, 10/3/2015
Yesterday I visited Central Winds Park hoping for migrants. It was kind of a slow morning. The cold front up north should have brought migrants down, but weather patterns seem to have held them from coming down to us. So I had 9 warbler species, none of them worth writing home about. The most unusual […]
Time for Cape May
Hawks are migrating now and one of the best places to see them is Cape May, New Jersey. Lots of the birds flying down the Atlantic flyway get channeled into the southern tail of New Jersey and end up concentrated at Cape May Point. They often wait there for weather favorable for the flight across […]