Last Fling of 2014

December 30, 2014 by Bob Zeller

Two days left in the year. Freezing weather today and tomorrow. With all of that, I guess my outing yesterday with Ann was the last of the birding for 2014. The day was pleasant and the birding was fair. We saw 28 species, but it wasn’t a particular good day for photography. Only a Great Blue Heron co-operated.

Great Blue Heron

On the plus side, at one point by the lake, I tried to catch some gulls in flight. I had assumed they were the usual Ring-billed Gulls that are all over the lake. When I got home and looked at the images in the computer, I found that they were in fact Bonaparte’s Gulls. Actually, they are as common here as the Ring-bills but I hadn’t seen one since last year. So it became number 202 on my 2014 Big Year Birding list. A nice way to finish the year.

I will be starting another list on Thursday, and my goal for 2015 is 210, an increase of eight over my 2014 total. It should keep me busy and out of trouble.

I hope all of my friends and fellow bloggers have a great New Year’s Holiday, and have great things in store for 2015.

Davis Mountains Vacation – Life Is Good

December 18, 2014 by Bob Zeller

Disclaimer: This post is best viewed on your computer where you can see all of the photographs, and click on them to see enlargements.

Life doesn’t get any better than this. Ann and I had the most wonderful time in a long time, mostly because we were joined by our dearest friends from Tennessee. We hadn’t seen them since 2008 but that seemed just like it was the day before yesterday. It was wonderful getting caught up and reminiscing. (gosh, I think I finally got that spelled right. ) We gave them a big Texas welcome and dragged them all over the place.

I had been invited to Fort Davis to be honored as a featured artist at the Art Gallery at the Drugstore. Bill and Nancy Davis, who by the way, are also the innkeepers at the Davis Mountains Inn where we all stayed, also own the art gallery and the drugstore restaurant. They, too, are wonderful people and we consider them among our best friends. They had a reception for me on Saturday, where I sold some of my work, and signed my book, “Birds, Beasts, and Buttes”. It was a huge success.

But it was small considering all that we did during the rest of the time, accompanied by our friends. We took the 75-mile scenic wildlife loop tour; Visited the McDonald’s Observatory; drove to Balmorhea State Park and Lake Balmorhea. All in the name of birding, where we wanted to top off our 2014 list of birds. We saw 54 different species during the trip. One of those pushed us pass our goal of 200. The Clark’s Grebe, mentioned later in this post gave us 201. Oh, we also got a bunch of photographs. I will show you them, in no particular order. Remember to click on them to see great enlargements.

Red-tailed Hawk

Red-tailed Hawks and other raptors seem to be everywhere.

Red-tailed Hawk

Northern Harrier on the hunt for prey.

The Northern Harrier was the most difficult hawk to photograph. They are fast, flying close to the ground, and not stopping to perch.

I can’t forget the four-legged wildlife in the area.

Pronghorned Antelope

Aoudad on mountain side.

Great scenic wonders abound, too, however I was more into the wildlife mode so I didn’t get too many landscapes.

Rocky Mountainside

Really, really, big rock

Of course, there are many smaller birds in abundance.

White-breasted Nuthatch

Ladder-backed Woodpecker

White-crowned Sparrow

Canyon Towhee

On a quick trip to Balmorhea State Park, we spotted this Red-tailed Hawk on the way.

Red-tailed Hawk

I told you the raptors were everywhere. After arriving at the state park, we saw numerous American Coots and this one pretty Lesser Scaup.

Lesser Scaup

When I first spotted it I hoped that it would have been a Greater Scaup, but after a closer look at the wings, I could see the white bar on the trailing wing didn’t extend to the wing tip as it would have on the Greater. As you can see on the next photos that it indeed a Lesser Scaup.

Lesser Scaup

Alas, on Sunday morning our dear friends had to return to their home in Tennessee. We will greatly miss them until the next time we meet, hopefully some time in 2015.

On Monday morning, Ann and I decided to visit Lake Balmorhea. We had never been to before, but we had heard about the great birding there. We were not disappointed as there were many wintering birds there. We only wish our friends could have spent another day as they would have loved this.

Eared Grebe

Snowy Egret

An American Pelican comes in for a landing.

Clark’s Grebe

A pair of Clark’s Grebes swim through the reeds.

The Clark’s Grebe was number 201 on our 2014 Big Year Birding list. It was also a ‘lifer’, being number 288 on our Life List. It made for a fun, and very enjoyable five days in the Davis Mountains area. After returning home, I received word from the San Angelo Country Club that two of my golf course photographs had been sold. So now Ann and I can eat for another week. 🙂

I hope you enjoyed the rather lengthy post. Click on all of the photos to see some nice enlargements. That’s all for this time.

Lewis’s Woodpecker – Number 200 for year

December 10, 2014 by Bob Zeller

We had gotten reports that a Lewis’s Woodpecker was hanging around the the north part of San Angelo State Park. We decided that it would be worth the drive to get a chance to view it, since I only needed to get one more to hit my goal of 200 birds for the year 2014. Being that the park is very large, we had a nine mile drive to the north entrance.

Pat Bayles, one of the rangers, saw us at the entrance gate and told us that it was being seen about a quarter of a mile down the road, in a copse of trees near some picnic tables. We drove down there and as we got there, a friend of ours, Randy Hesford, was already there and he had his camera trained on the bird a couple of hundred yards away. I grabbed my camera and got out of the car.

The bird moved to another tree about 250 yards away. The sky was very overcast, but we could make him out easily with our binoculars. However with the lighting conditions, it was practically just a silhouette through the camera’s viewfinder. Even adding a couple of stops to my Exposure Compensation, didn’t help much, as you can see in these photos. I tried to adjust the lighting in my post processing, but with not much success. Of course, with such a distance, I also had to crop extensively.

Lewis’s Woodpecker

By contrast, here is a photo that I took a couple of years ago when a Lewis’s Woodpecker made an appearance here.

Lewis’s Woodpecker

Conditions were much better then, and the bird was a litle bit closer. At least those photos above provide enough to help identify the bird. So now that I have my 200 for the year, I hope to add more this week during our trip to Fort Davis.

So this is definitely my last post until our return next week.

Good News – Bad News

December 9, 2014 by Bob Zeller

We couldn’t resist. Today we decided we had to bird for a couple of hours at the parks at Lake Nasworthy. The heck with cleaning up the house. We are pretty much ready anyway, for our upcoming trip to Fort Davis, leaving Thursday morning.

So away we went. I think I will give you the good news first. We saw a Lesser Black-backed Gull. A very rare bird for this area, possibly the first reported sighting. It was hanging with about 100 Ring-billed Gulls, so I spotted it also immediately, although I didn’t know what it was. I snapped a couple of photos and sent them to Eric Carpenter, my go-to guy at Texas Ornithological Society. He e-mailed back to me a definite confirmation.

Lesser Black-backed Gull

Now the bad news. Although it is a lifer for me, number 277, it was not my 200th on my 2014 Big Year List. A friend of mine noticed that I had listed Eastern Wood Pewee twice on the list, so I am back to 199.

But possibly more good news. We have been informed that there is a Lewis’s Woodpecker hanging around the north entry to San Angelo State Park. So I have a feeling that we will be checking it out Wednesday morning. That would be number 200 if we can spot it.

While I am writing this, I might as well include some nice photos from today.

Black-crowned Night Heron – juvenile

Dark-eyed Junco – slate colored

White-crowned Sparrow

Then one more that I forgot to post yesterday.

Eastern Bluebird – female

So now I think that will be my last post before we leave for Fort Davis. But, I think that is what I said yesterday…… 🙂

Birding in San Angelo and number 199.

December 8, 2014 by Bob Zeller

Thinks are looking up here in San Angelo in west Texas. Several days ago I posted about the golf course at San Angelo Country Club, because I didn’t have any new birds to report. Birds seemingly were scarce, and we didn’t see as many as we used to do.

Things changed today. Ann and I are getting ready for my upcoming reception and book-signing at the Art Gallery in Fort Davis, so we haven’t had much time to bird. This afternoon about 1:00 PM we decided to take a break and head to the parks at nearby Lake Nasworthy. We birded until about 3:00, or about two hours and saw thirty-six species. Wow! What an improvement over the past few weeks.

The highlight of the day was spotting a Red-shouldered Hawk. In our local checklist, it is listed as “uncommon – usually present but hard to find”. We were about to leave Spring Creek Park when Ann spotted it on a tree branch, staring down into the weedy brush. I quickly drove ahead about fifty yards, made a U turn and pulled back up so I could get a photo from my driver’s side car window.

Just as I got my Canon 7D Mark II with the Tamron 150-600mm lens lined up, the bird apparently spotted some prey in the brush. He dove down and was out of sight for a few minutes. We waited a bit and were ready to leave, when he flew from the brush and was visible through our windshield as he headed for the other side of the road.

I could see him far into the woods, so I turned the car around and drove back over. I couldn’t get a bead on him from the car, so I got out and walked to the treeline. I could spot him about fifty yards away in the the mesquites, sitting on a branch with his back to me. I hand-held the camera and squeezed off a few shots, just seconds before he took off again. I really didn’t know if I had good results until I got the images loaded into my digital darkroom.

Red-shouldered Hawk

It turns out that I got lucky. The red shoulders aren’t very visible but the Sibley’s guide says that they aren’t always visible on an adult. Besides, when he flew over our windshield, we definitely saw the unmistakeable burnt-orange underparts. By the way, this was to be our 199th bird on our quest to reach 200 species for the year, so we were pretty happy with that. Of course, in any other year, we would have already seen a Red-shouldered Hawk by this time.

I also was able the get this beautiful female American Goldfinch.

American Goldfinch

She was in the brush along the treeline in Spring Creek Park. There were various other small birds, Dark-eyed Juncos, Black-crested Titmouses, Bewick’s Wrens, and Ruby-crowned Kinglets, but I was unable to get usable photos of any of them because of the thick brush.

We also saw along the way, a flyover of a Red-tailed Hawk, a Northern Flicker, a Forster’s Tern on a buoy in the lake, and the other usual woodpeckers, sparrows, cormorants, and American Coots.

This may be the last post from me for a few says. We will be leaving for Fort Davis on Thursday morning and not returning until next Tuesday. I may have some new photos for you on our return.

Photographing San Angelo Country Club

December 3, 2014 by Bob Zeller

Who says that I only photograph birds? Actually, before I got into birding and photographing birds, I leaned toward landscapes, flowers, etc. But one thing that I always loved was the game of golf. San Angelo has one of the most beautiful courses in the area, and that is the San Angelo Country Club.

I was privy to be able to play it a couple of times as a guest of a few friends. I did pretty well. I got around the course without falling into the water hazards. My favorite shot was the explosion shot off of the first tee, and I always tried to keep my putts low.

I really admired the gorgeous landscaping on some of the holes, so I approached Jason Hase, the pro, and got permission to use one of their golf carts and go around and photograph some of them.

Although the entire eighteen holes are things of beauty, six of them really stood out, as they each had some feature that made them more photogenic.

For your enjoyment here those images:

Hole Number 1. This hole has a pond just short right of the green, in the trees. It shouldn’t come into play unless you have a bad slice. I captured this scene from behind the pond, looking towards the green and flag.

Hole number one – San Angelo Country Club

Hole number 3. This photo was taken from the right side of the green. I loved the tree in the foreground and the background view of a pond on an adjacent hole. The play on this hole comes from the left as you look at the image.

Hole number three – San Angelo Country Club

Hole number 4. For this photo, I was standing behind the green. A nice view of the pond fronting the green.

Hole number four – San Angelo Country Club

Hole number 6. This a pretty little par three hole with a pond with a fountain in front. Be sure to use enough club. I photographed this one from behind the tee, trying to put the flowers and shrubs into the foreground.

Hole number six – San Angelo Country Club

Hole number 10. Another three-shot hole to begin the back nine. Again you need all carry to reach the green. I photographed it standing on the tee. The blue that you see in the trees way right of the green is the Concho River.

Hole number ten – San Angelo Country Club

Hole number 15. I love this pretty little par three. It has this gorgeous pond to the left front of the teeing area. It doesn’t come into play, of course, but adds to the beauty of the hole.

Hole number fifteen – San Angelo Country Club

Yesterday, Jason contacted me and we arranged for the club to purchase the rights to these image for their new website. I hope to someday to get back there and perhaps photograph the remaining holes.

I hope you enjoyed these photographs. Click on any of them to see beautiful enlargements.