Monday, May 04, 2015

Warblers, Woodcocks, Snakes, and the Blue-Crested Hoopoe

Birdwatching at Magee Marsh. 
It wasn't exactly a coincidence that Carol arrived at Magee Marsh just when we did this morning, but we weren't expecting her.We were very glad to birdwatch with her until it started to rain. Magee Marsh is famous because the birds rest there on the way north for the summer. This morning the wind changed and blew in lots of them from further south in Ohio -- motivating us, Carol, and large crowds of other birdwatchers.

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Above: a palm warbler, one of many warblers we saw from the boardwalk.

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Woodcocks are marked to look just like the leafy background. I call this one Waldo Woodcock as in "Where's Waldo?" Obviously since you can hardly see them it's even harder to take their photos. For more bird photos, see Len's Flickr page here.

We also saw this snake. I hope he doesn't eat warblers.
More for birdwatchers: the Midsomer Murders TV show called Rare Bird includes a large number of birdwatchers, some of whom are the victims. They are squabbling over whether one of them has seen a very rare bird -- a blue crested hoopoe. We watched this rather funny episode last night: it's quite wrong about birds in several ways.

2 comments:

Vagabonde said...

I looked at all your posts and that was a treat! So many beautiful birds and some I had never seen. We see many birds at our 7 bird feeders. We get the usual like cardinals, bluebirds, blue jays, orioles, etc. Sometimes we get some unusual birds but I do not know their names. The yellow warbler you show looks very family as we have about 3 different yellow birds that come, but I am not sure ours is a palm warbler. I liked the road runner and the owls that you showed. I hear them around here at night but have seen one only once. We used to hear the whip-poor-will but since more subdivisions have been built around us and more people are moving in we don’t hear it anymore. You went on a great journey.

Jeanie said...

You guys found some fun stuff, though I'd give that snake a pass, if you please! It's hard to believe all of these are so close -- I rarely see so many interesting birds. Indeed, the birds seem to be boycotting the feeder this spring. I got a new one (thinking maybe the old one smelled or something) and new seed -- better seed, I thought. But few takers. I thought it might take them awhile but then some sparrow would tell his buddies... so far only Bushy and a woodpecker seem to be hanging around. Sigh.