For many people, their interest in birding starts, or expands, when we invite birds into our yards by creating habitat and providing select foods and water to make your yard a stopover space. During fall, some birds will spend a portion of a day, a few days, or part of the entire season. Every yard evolves as plants and trees grow, and as we modify and add new avian attractions. Fall is a key period to enhance your yard – for the week, for the season, and for years ahead. With that in mind, you can get a creative edge on fall birding improvements to your yard next Wednesday by checking out the new online presentation: Inviting Birds In: Fall Migration.
There is an obvious reason that as reported last week was designated as International Hawk Migration Week (Saturday, September 12 to Sunday, September 20), which was certainly magnified by the mass-migration of birds of prey documented last week during the peak of fall's migration flights. With daily high hawk counts and their locations provided below, you can readily see how migration increased throughout the week, and you can even see north to south numbers changing between Duluth and Detroit to Corpus Christi and Benson Rio Grande counting sites. All daily totals included huge numbers of Broad-winged Hawks migrating south in the mix of hawks, eagles, kites, and falcons observed.
You are invited to the annual Fort Morgan bird banding event at the southern tip of Alabama, the largest banding activity for the Banding Coalition of the Americas each year. This fall the banding event will take place October 3rd to October 10th from 8am to 3pm, although banding will finish at noon October 10th. Each year about 600 people from the local area and from across North America visit the banding station to learn about bird banding, observe the process, and experience the fall bird migration spectacle at Fort Morgan State Historic Site in Gulf Shores, Alabama.
You are invited to watch the latest Wild Birds Revealed video, you can see Anna's Hummingbirds and Costa's Hummingbirds up close to view their unique flight styles, vivid colors, and amazing stop-on-a-dime movements. Through the incredible camera work of Tim and Russell Laman you can watch how hummingbirds fly in a totally different manner from other birds. Using a unique wingbeat style they suspend themselves in midair, hovering, then maneuvering into position to feed on sugar-rich flower nectar available to only the most skilled aerialists.
Birders' Remorse: It's always easiest to use hindsight and say shoulda, coulda, woulda – not necessarily in that order. But when I checked for a HawkCount update Thursday afternoon, I definitely shoulda been back at Hawk Ridge because not only was the biggest migration of the season underway, it turned out to be a super-exceptional migration day at the ridge – the best in years! I coulda because I was in Fargo Wednesday, 2 hours closer to Duluth; and woulda if I knew Thursday would be the day when a record count would be made, with 21,552 raptors migrating overhead! Broad-winged Hawks flew southward along Hawk Ridge on September 17 to the tune of 19,768(!!), along with 955 Sharp-shinned Hawks, 350 Bald Eagles, 294 American Kestrels, and more!
The New Bushnell A5 8x42 Binoculars are the flagship of the A-Series line, designed for birders who want the brightest, most color-accurate views of the birds they find. The HD glass and large 42mm objective lenses gather more light, while dielectric-coated and phase-coated prisms deliver true colors and improved contrast. The 8x magnification provides a wide field of view of 393 feet at 1,000 yards and a close focus distance of 8 feet. The wave-patterned soft rubber armor — inspired by water waves and sand dunes — provides a secure, comfortable grip when birding conditions get wet or cold.
Already acclaimed with the prestigious "Birding Product of the Year" award from the Wild Bird Feeding Institute, the newest addition to the Squirrel Buster family – the Evolution Feeder – is made to be easy to easy to fill, easy to maintain, easy to appreciate. The Evolution has everything you want in a feeder – patented squirrel-proof technology, a no-tools component system that makes it easy to clean, and new features like a Double-Cardinal Ring for a variety of sizes of birds to perch on, a patented water diversion system designed to keep seeds dry, and a 2 pound seed capacity.
Featuring Keith Hansen's extraordinary artwork, "Kingfishers of the World" T-shirts are available from Big Pockets in long-sleeved and short-sleeved options. This exclusive design is available along with Tees that include images of warblers, bluebirds, tanagers, owls, a heron, a raven, and more. Big Pockets T-shirts are made of quality 100 percent pre-shrunk cotton with double-needle stitching throughout the shirts. Big Pockets is best known for their expanding line of outdoor clothing, birding and photography vests, optics accessories, gifts, and an impressive line of insect-repellent clothing, scarves, wraps, and blankets.
There are many new record bird sightings to share, starting with the documentation of the First North American Record Chilean Skua offshore from New Hampshire, which is also a first for the Northern Hemisphere considering that Chilean Skuas usually don't venture north of Argentina in the Atlantic Ocean. Of course, this Chilean Skua is also a First State Record, as is the First State Record Great Skua that was sighted during the same record-breaking pelagic birding trip. There are 6 more First Record birds to report, along with other record sightings and an exciting list of Asian birds observed on Gambel Island, Alaska.
I often emphasize the need for good sunlight, because sunlight from behind your position produces the best quality photographs with the most accurate colors. It also provides sharper focus and better contrast, while bringing out highlights in the face and plumage. I understand this, or overstand it, to the point of not opting to go birding unless there is good sunlight, mostly limiting my time afield to a period when the sun is beaming at the best angle to illuminate the birds I find to photograph.
With the water reflecting a beautiful shade of blue sky and the wind adding a dimension of movement to the surface, the loon is perfectly illuminated from the white-whites to the black-blacks and all colors in between. This lighting and the bright colors are not possible without sunlight illuminating the bird and the surrounding water (550mm zoom lens, f-8 aperture, 1/2000 shutter speed, 800 ISO).
After returning from photographing Common Loons at the Pelican Lakes in Minnesota a dozen days ago, while reviewing the photos from that eventful day I was reminded that at the end of that photo session an expanding cloud formation progressed far enough east to affect the quality of the sunlight in a big way – instantly. The colors, contrast, and highlights in the loon’s features were very dull compared to moments before, plus it also changed the color of the water, which made a huge difference in the quality of the photographs I took during the brief period when the cloud affected the scene and photo quality.
An image of the same loon photographed moments later illustrates the opposite effects when a cloudy sky screens the sunlight. The bird and water are dull, dark, and dingy-looking at best (550mm zoom lens, f-8 aperture, 1/2500 shutter speed, 800 ISO).
The beautiful wind-blown water turned from bright blue to a dingy, dirty-looking gray – looking more like a black & white photo than a color photograph. The bird’s colors weren’t affected nearly as much, with the white remaining almost as white and the differences in the bill color remaining mostly alike. But if the loon still had its alternate plumage that shows some iridescent green qualities on the feathers of its head and neck, the colors would have changed to a monotone black. And what a difference the dark water devoid of highlights and reflected blue sky made. It was not a photograph I would keep or share with anyone – except as an example of how important good sunlight beaming from behind is to producing a fine image. In this case the difference in water colors made a huge difference, and the photos show the variability of water color provided by the reflected sky along with the texture the windblown water.
Moments later, the overhead cloud is still a big factor on the dull sky color reflected on the water, but it slightly overexposed the loon to the point that black shades turned to grays. I will always choose to photograph birds during rich angled sunlight periods during late afternoon and mid-morning when the light produces colors are true and bright (600mm zoom lens, f-8 aperture, 1/1250 shutter speed, 800 ISO).
The third photograph shows how when the sunlight returned, the resulting loon photo was a bit overexposed (overly bright). It is an interesting image nonetheless, and in another way it illustrates how the light and surrounding scene can affect the bird and its surroundings as you photograph. The 3 photographs shared here were taken within a minute of time, so they provide a good trio of examples of how weather and sunlight conditions can affect your photographs. And how timing with respect to sunshine is important when planning a photo trip. While I share my best photographs taken of the molting loons in last week’s issue, I wanted to emphasize the importance of these essential elements to taking a quality photograph (the first of the 3 provided here). Keep the sun at your back and your shadow pointing at the bird, but if the sun is screened by clouds, I’m staying home.
