Sunday, September 20, 2009

Hopping Around on Sunday

The day started at 8 am with a trip out to the Norman Bird Sanctuary for their every-other-Sunday bird walk. It was a long walk today, out the entrance and down Third Beach Rd. to the salt marsh behind Third Beach, and coming back by way of some trails through meadows that belong to the Sanctuary. We certainly saw lots of birds! The object of today's quest was the Marbled Godwit who has been hanging out in the salt marsh behind the parking lot at Third Beach for about three weeks now. We saw it, but I didn't get a usable photo because it was way too backlit on a very bright day. There were also lots of Tree Swallows around; they're staging for the migration south. And Goldfinches, Mockingbirds, Catbirds, etc. along the road on the way down and in the fields on the way back, as well as immature Little Blue Herons, immature and adult Snowy Egrets, Great Egrets, Killdeer, and a Lesser Yellowlegs (Sandpiper family) hanging out with the Godwit, all down in the salt marsh. But no pictures; they were all either out of camera range or the lighting was bad.

There were also deer. I really wanted to get a shot of a handsome young 2-point buck hanging out on the hillside across the pool in the salt marsh, but he got into the reeds and I never saw him again. But we saw a Mama and two fawns in the front yard of the house next to Sanctuary headquarters, and I managed to get a decent shot of the fawns.


We got back to Newport around 11 am and I made a beeline for Ballard Park and Gooseneck Cove. No critter shots, but I'm really pleased with these two shots of Gooseneck Cove and its salt marsh.



And that was my Sunday!

© 2009 by A. Roy Hilbinger

9 comments:

  1. ...those shots are gorgeous--the lucky person who lives in that house! A Marbled Godwit would be a life bird for me. I don't think I would even recognize one. I really need to move to the ocean so I could learn my shorebirds. That would do the trick... Sounds like a wonderful day...

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  2. Superb shots Roy. They make me want to jump on a plane and come and visit RI. What a beautiful part of your country you live in.

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  3. what a wonderful sunday.... like alan, I too feel the pull of rhode island!

    gotta pull out my peterson guide to look up a marbled godwit... not ringing a bell.

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  4. Gorgeous. I'm still having trouble getting the blue sky in my shots. It's washed out. Sometimes I fluke it but most times I get great foreground shots with too much backlight. You're fortunate to have such wetlands, they're so important for migrating birds. Do you us a solar filter? Sorry so many questions.

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  5. Thanks everybody! It was a great day to be out.

    Kelly & Kim, you can take a look at a Marbled Godwit here and here.

    Baino, the wetlands are what keep me nailed here in this area; the diversity of the wildlife supported by the salt marshes is fantastic. And no filters; I sometimes use a polarizer filter when shooting clouds, but not otherwise.

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  6. The deer are so beautiful and fragile. It's a beautiful photo and a not usual composition. I love the look of the fawn's coloration - spots still visible, but darker mature coat apparent too.

    Can I paint this one?

    P.S. Your self-portraits are the bomb.

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  7. Patrice, the composition is what it is because they were looking over at Mama, but I couldn't fit all three in the frame as Mama was kinda far away.

    You wanna paint this? Sure, go ahead. You're leaving Crows behind and moving on to deer now?

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  8. Thank you! I'm still loving crows and blackbirds, but there are no limits to great images and my desire to "capture" them in paint.

    I'm going to have to start sending you commissions from these...

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  9. Neat pic of the deer!

    Oh, and you have been nominated for a Kreative Blogger Award! It's waiting on my blog for you:)

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