Close encounters of the bird kind

With birding as in life, you never know what lies around the corner. I had two great blue heron sightings today. This morning, from the main observation platform at the Charles Rogers Preserve in Princeton, I spotted a heron at the edge of the reeds on the back side of the pond in the centerContinue reading “Close encounters of the bird kind”

Surprise! It’s a hermit thrush

One of the joys of photographing birds is the unexpected bird that shows up on your computer screen, as happened to me this morning. I was on one of my usual two-mile loops at the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm, walking the trail counterclockwise, when I spotted a couple of bluebirds in a tree with smallContinue reading “Surprise! It’s a hermit thrush”

A hermit thrush tests my ID skills

As my fifth year of regular birding is underway, my skill at identifying birds has vastly improved. But I still often encounter birds that puzzle me and defy easy identification. Case in point: this morning at the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm, I headed left off the trail from the parking lot, down the alley ofContinue reading “A hermit thrush tests my ID skills”

In praise of the not-quite-so-early birder

Most of my morning birding walks are at dawn or even slightly ahead of it, typically a convergence of my believing the birds are most active when they wake up and my needing to get home and get ready for work. Even on the weekends and especially on Saturdays, I stick to the same earlyContinue reading “In praise of the not-quite-so-early birder”