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Animals roaming free

 
 
 
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A common loon at the same spot. Loons and Common Mergensers feed a lot the same. Loon also have their legs located well back for swimming underwater but you never see a loon motoring on the surface like that merganser.

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Took a stop at Mud Creek. The Osprey is up there as usual but didn't come out to fly.
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Bad photo but interesting. This hawk was chasing a small bird. I think that it got it and then flew off. I need to study up what hawk has a white tail and chases flying birds. It was too slow for a falcon I think.
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Last full day in Maine I went to the Petit Manan National wildlife refuge up the coast.

A least sandpiper on the shore.
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This was VERY interesting. It's a juvenile bald eagle and it's being harassed by a laughing gull. The gull was swooping and bothering it as the eagle headed away from whereever it had been.

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The beach was covered with plover and sandpiper. There were likely over 100 of them. This photo is a combination of semipalmated plover and semipalmated sandpiper and the top leftmost bird that's largely white is, I think, a sanderling sandpiper.

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Another least sandpiper
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A semipalmated sandpiper
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A group of semipalmated plovers
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They would fly off in flocks to a diferent section of the beach. The plovers and sandpipers together.
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Another group of sandpipers and plovers
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Off in the distance a flock of cormorants
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Back at the house a bald eagle
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Taken from the shore in front of our house.
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The End
 
I went to the frog pond at lunch. It's quickly becoming a frog puddle due to lack of rain.



But there must still be something in there as I spooked a great Blue Heron.

It flew out of the pond and landed on the top of a small evergreen. It's showing it's dagger tongue.

 
The frog puddle is getting smaller and smaller but the herons continue to come. I think that they are cleaning out the frogs as the great blue can stand in the entire pond now.

But one flew off as I approached the pond.



It landed in a tree on the distance. Nice and close but bad light.



There are still plenty of adult painted turtles. But I worry that the quarter size young ones are at risk to the herons.

This is a very small one and probably only hatched this spring.



The potted sandpiper continues to visit.



I spooked the green heron today.



It landed 260 feet away in a tree.

 
I haven't been able to view image intense threads for a while. Thank you, crazyfingers. I enjoy your wildlife shots so much.

The ducks in a row: is that the origin of the saying?
 
Hopefully not too much of a derail but these two very special birds flew by in view from my front yard this evening.

Vintage B-17


Vintage B-24


The B-24 came by for a second pass.
 
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Not a lot this weekend.

A baby painted turtle in the frog puddle.


A cottontail in my yard. At appears to have a wound on it's shoulder.


A Killdeer down at the town beach


Way out there in the Swan Pond a great blue and a bonus wood duck.


The prize of the weekend. A lifer for me. A Swamp Sparrow.
 
I went to the office today and this red tail on the lamp post. Could have zoomed in more and was in the process of doing that when it felt. It feels I only had about 15 seconds to get the camera out and on, snapped two shots and it left.

 
From the last few days. Nothing particularly spectacular.

At the frog puddle the great blue still visits.





The frog puddle is so low. In the spring it's up to the tree line. I have never seen it so low. All the large frogs are gone and I have only seen one painted turtle left. Evidently so low the herons and perhaps foxes are able to get the frogs and turtles as they have almost no place to hide. I hesitate to even bring the boys down. On the bright side the three baby painted turtles that we took as pets and have in a tank at home should feel lucky. If we hadn't taken them they would probably have been food for herons.


A spotted sandpiper continues to check out the puddle. Can't say I agree with it's taste in food.





Saturday I went to the state park. There was a family of crows bothering this hawk. I never got a good photo of the hawk but it's not a red-tail. It has tail that's dark and light banded from below. Sometimes a crow would chase it. Sometimes it would chase a crow. It appeared to be pretty maneuverable.



Looking out the duck blind there appears to be nothing out there. However just to the left of the point of the island in the center there is some stuff going on.


Zoom way in and there is a great blue there along with some wood ducks.


I walked along the trail to the right where for a different view from the last shot and it appears that the heron is telling some wood ducks to keep back and not disturb the fishing.



More wood ducks at extreme range.


Going to Maine for a long weekend this weekend. Hope to see something more interesting.
 
crazyfingers said:
Saturday I went to the state park. There was a family of crows bothering this hawk. I never got a good photo of the hawk but it's not a red-tail. It has tail that's dark and light banded from below. Sometimes a crow would chase it. Sometimes it would chase a crow. It appeared to be pretty maneuverable.

Click to expand...

Can't tell for sure from the photo, but from what I can see and the description, it might be a broad-winged hawk, esp. if its underwings were whitish.

BroadWingedHawk5.jpg

See:

http://hawkmigration.net/documents/NEHW_Hawk_Guide_08.pdf
 
Thanks. I had attempted to look it up when I got home and the broad-winged Hawk was actually the one that I thought most likely but I was still unsure enough to attempt to name it.
 
spikepipsqueak said:
I haven't been able to view image intense threads for a while.
Click to expand...

Gosh.

We live where naturalists abound. The best one for quick access is a Rotarian friend Lois Miller who specializes in birds and other local things.

She's on facebook. Here is her photos page: https://www.facebook.com/lois.miller.102/media_set?set=a.1070192966387.2009321.1573014294&type=3

I know she's got some nice white Heron and and blue Heron pics. They perch on stumps on Lake Garrison and they look a bit like pterodactyls when they take flight. In my quick scan I didn't pick them up among her photos.

The next is one of my two significant naturalist democrat associates here in Curry county, Tim Palmer. But he makes his living on wild life and wild river photography. He's got 19 books if your're interested.

The other is Ann Vileisis a natural historian and environmentalist who has a recent book Kitchen Literacy http://www.kitchenliteracy.com/Kitchen_Literacy/Kitchen_Literacy.html

With these people around and former California director of Forestry David Pesonen, another local democrat (we share funding effort activities), who has an Oral history for him at UC Berkeley. He was big in early anti nuclear plant activity in the sixties. http://archive.org/stream/pesonenenviron00pesorich/pesonenenviron00pesorich_djvu.txt
natural I don't engage much in pursuits of nature any more. Believe me these people will drive one to drink or distraction, your choice.

Yeah. Way too much. I think you may like Lois' pics though. She got some nice pictures on her recent trip to Costa Rica.
 
Back from a long weekend at the place in Maine

The first day was better than all the other days.

In the morning at the shore down from the house.

That long line of Common Eiders.

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A group of Red-necked Grabes down from the north.

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Eastern Phoebe

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Common Loons

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Bald Eagle

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The bald eagle is in the shadows in the center of this photo.

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The above were all in about the first half hour the first moring.

Later we went to the Schoodic section of Acadia National Park.

A pile of semipalmated plovers.

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One samipalmated plover close up.

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A Black Guillemot with a fish

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All eaten

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I thought that this was fun. A gull got too close to this common eider and so the eider chased it away

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A spotted sandpiper

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Better photo of some common eiders

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I believe juvenile herring gulls

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A great Blue on a brackish pond at Schoodic

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The great blue flew off. I guess a short trip as it has not curled up it's neck.

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Towards the end of the day we went to the harbor. A pile of cormorants on a dock.

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A gull yawning.

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The above was Day 1 and the best day of the trip

Day two started off with an insect on the railing of the house.

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Barnicles in the water. Looking closely several have their fans out to catch their food.

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That was all that was worth posting for days 2

Day 3, Red-necked Grebe back at the shore to the house.

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Lowsy shot but only my second hermit thrush. This is a juvenile.

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Hooded Mergansers I think at Mud Creek

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Day 4

Horned Grebe at the shore to the house

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A flat bay with Eider and loon before we had to drive home.

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And the little tree by the water seems lonely still without it's song sparrow from the beginning of the summer.

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I have the feeling another season is done in terms of going to our place in Maine. The house is 150 years old and is no longer habitable in cold weather.
 
Looking for advice.

There is a wild wattlebird in my kitchen at the moment, very distressed and unable to find its way out. I have closed off all light sources except the open door, but it keeps flying into the ceiling just above the door. I've been walking through the doorway so it can see that there is an opening, and have just placed a chair in the open doorway in the hope it will land on the back and realise it is practically outside, and fly out from there.

I've also opened a window on the other side in the hope that airflow will guide it, but it's been 2 hours now.

Does anyone have any hints?


Hah! He just found the door!
 
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I guess wattlebirds aren't known for their intelligence.
He didn't poo on the counter or anything, I hope...
 
Had it been a starling or a blackbird I'd be scrubbing bird poo off every surface, still. As it is, I haven't found any yet, but keep finding bits of black down in odd places.

I can't help worrying that he gave himself brain damage with that first, panicky prang with the ceiling. It should never have taken 2.5 hours to find a sunlit doorway in a darkened room. Or, as you suggest, wattlebirds are dimwits.

It was this little fellow. (Not my image)
637202.jpg
 
I have mentioned before but no harm repeating the story. A few years ago, April 2011, my wife and I were on the couch and she commented that she thought that she heard a noise coming from the fireplace. I got up and opened the doors to the fireplace and sure enough. There was a very sooty wood duck in there just sitting. It must have been looking for a nice nesting hole and fell down the chimney and couldn't fly out.

I snapped a photo.




Then when I tried to grab it it flew out of the fireplace and flew, or tried to fly, around the living room. Of course it crashed into walls a couple times. But fortunately I was able to grab it. Wife took the photo. It did not appear to have hurt itself. I let it out the front door and it went off into the darkness.

 
Today was really the only nice day all week. I finally gout out to the state park but not much special. I could post a blue heron from a quarter mile away but that's boring. Lots of Canada Geese on the pond but also boring. Mallards. Boring. There were lots of painted turtles out sunning today.

Here is one puzzle. There is a pond at the part that's about 1/4 mile to the other side.



Way on the other side there is a log with turtles. The smaller ones look like regular size adult painted turtles of 7 inches or so long shell. But that big one? It doesn't look like a snapper, though it's a real far away shot at 1/4 mile. But if it's not a snapper, what? It's so much larger than the painted turtles.

By the way, this photo is cropped a lot. It's so far away.
 
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