Conowingo - December 2016

Yesterday we spent the morning at Conowingo Fisherman’s Park. It was a sunny morning – Christmas – and the traffic was light. When we got there we immediately noticed that there were more gulls than we’d seen before and the water was churning from the dam.

It takes us about an hour to get to Conowingo from our house so we had not put on all our winter gear beforehand. I added ski bibs, a fleece jacket, a silky balaclava, and a hooded scarf before I put on my coat. Foot warmers were added to the bottom of my feet before I put on my hiking boots and I stuck hand warmers in my gloves. At the last minute, I decided to add the bands the legs of the ski bibs to shorten them a little since the pavement was slushy and wet. The temperature was in the 30s…a good but not severe test of the ‘cold weather’ garb. I stayed comfortably warm!  The silky balaclava is newest addition and I like it because it easily pulls up over my mouth…are higher over my nose; That would be great for colder or windier days. You can also see that we were not the only ones enjoying the birds at Conowingo on Christmas morning!

The Bald Eagles are the reason we go to Conwingo. My husband got the best pictures of the day of an eagle that had just caught a fish.

He also took a picture of one up in a tulip poplar tree that we noticed as we talked back to our car getting ready to leave.

I took some pictures that are past the optical zoom range of my camera…into the digital zoom.  There were almost always eagles on the abutment come out from the dam and I couldn’t resist trying to capture their interactions.  The one on the left is keeping a firm hold on his catch.

Is this one screaming at the gulls to go away?

And sometimes there is just a big tussle. There are at least three birds involved in this picture.

This eagle is surrounded by black vultures – although they all seem to be not making eye contact with each other.

There were groups of black vultures on the railing at the top of the dam…and there always seemed to be one or two that were spreading their wings.

I saw one cormorant in the water…and one flying low over the water.

The gulls were ring-billed gulls. They would dive down to catch a fish then (sometimes) bob downstream on the surface.

Now for some ‘can you find’ pictures. There is a great blue heron in each of the three pictures below (not flying).

Do you see the pigeons in the picture below?

And finally – do you see the two Bald Eagles?

Conowingo was a good outing for our Christmas morning!

Conowingo – May 2016

We made the trek to Conowingo Dam to see Bald Eagles last weekend. There was some action right away – but at about the limit of my Canon Powershot SX710 HS point-and-shot. The images are not as crisp as a photographer with a more expensive camera and big lens...but still good enough to capture behavior. It was entertaining to watch the eagles – many of them juveniles (i.e. without white heads and tails yet).

I got one sequence with an eagle coming into to land near another on already perched on a rock. Notice how the one in the air has extended legs/talons.

The eagle that he is joining appears to be vocalizing (open beak) and still has some white feathers mixed in with the brown – not quite an adult probably.

Note the 6 eagles on the dame abutments (2 adults on the closest one…and 1 adult with 3 juveniles on the far one).

A few minutes later – the adult on the far abutment has moved closer to the other adults. The juveniles are on their own.

The dam did not appear to have all its turbines in operation so there were not as many stunned fish around for the eagles. Cormorants would fly up close to the spillway and then float down river getting fish along the way.

I saw a few Great Blue Herons but then when I got home I noticed even more in my pictures…like this one flying past a bald eagle on a rock.

The Great Blue Heron I noticed the most while I was there was on a point of rocks for a very long time. I didn’t ever see it catch a fish so maybe it was savoring a fish it caught before I noticed it. The cormorants in the background are flying toward the dam (to the left in the picture) and would then float back down stream as they looked for breakfast.

Now for a little game. How many Great Blue Herons do you see in this picture (click on the image to see it larger)?

I count 6. Now for one a little more difficult. This one has Bald Eagles and Great Blue Herons. How many of each bird can you find (the smaller, dark birds are cormorants…don’t bother counting them)?

I count 6 eagles (4 adults, 2 juveniles) and 9 herons. The next one has more eagles in the air. How many Bald Eagles and Great Blue Herons in the image below?

4 eagles in the air (3 adults and 1 juvenile) and one eagle in the rocks. The herons are more of a challenge because there are so many. There are at least 12 (note – one is on the far right catching a fish, the body is hidden behind a rock but the neck and head are showing). What about the image below…the last of this game of eagle and heron counting.

There are 4 eagles (only the back is seen of one of them) – all with white heads. But there are 17 herons!

And now for one plant from near the dam. I took a picture of the Princess Tree back in back in February.

Here is what it looks like today. Still non-native and invasive…and growing beside the parking lot at the base of Conowingo Dam.

Chincoteague Sunset…and Sunrise

Chincoteague was the only refuge on our 4 refuge trek that the weather was good for late and early day photography. We chose a place with water and pines for sunset and got there when the color was just starting in the sky and the reflections in the water were very clear.

I adjusted my camera to get the color and let all the vegetation be in silhouette just as the sun was at the tree tops.

And then it was in the trees.

Two Great Blue Herons flew to a snag behind us and waited there while the light faded still more.

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The next morning we were up an entering the refuge when it opened at 6 AM (this was before daily light savings time and the refuge was on winter hours). The sky was already rosy by the time we got to our spot – a little further along the road that we had used for sunset.

There were birds already busy in the water that took on the color of the sky.

A contrail was reflected in the water closer to us.

The light became more yellow and the geese continued their morning grooming and breakfast.

Then the color turned to orange. The sun was above the horizon.

Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge

The last refuge on our trek was Chincoteague. I’ve posted about our two prior trips (fall 2014kingfisher, egrets, cormorants, herons, gulls, lighthouse, and sunrise/sunset; spring 2013vultures, blue grosbeak, and egrets). We always see Great Blue Herons at Chincoteague. When I photograph them now I am looking for something a bit out of the ordinary. There was one that was all fluffed up in the cold – standing very still on one leg – framed by dry grasses and brush.

Another Great Blue Heron was perched on a branch over some water – preening.

I noticed a lot more dead and splintered trees this trip and found out that the pine bark beetle had been particularly hard on the pines the past few years and

Winter storm Jonas brought such high winds that is brought trees down on the refuge.

There were tundra swans that we saw in greater numbers at Eastern Neck

And snow geese (sleeping here) that we saw in greater numbers at Blackwater.

This ring-billed gull (adult non-breeding) was not pleased that we pulled up on the road shoulder near him.

We saw a few pintail ducks (and some buffleheads which, again, were difficult to photograph – and I am refraining from posting another blurry picture!).

The birds I had to look up on allaboutbirds were this marbled godwit (I think)

And a juvenile black-crowned night heron (my husband is the one that spotted this one in the brush over the water where we often see other herons).

Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge

The third refuge on our trek was Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Delaware. It was a gray day --- but at least the rain happened while we were driving to the refuge than while we were there. One of our nav systems took us to a road through ponds but not to the visitor’s center. It was part of the refuge and we saw some Great Blue Herons

And Yellow Legs – very active in catching fish in the shallows.

Fortunately, we had another nav system that did chart a path to the visitor center and we did some hiking. Again – there was construction on one of the trails near the visitor and it was noisy enough that most of the wildlife has found someplace else to be for the day. On our hike I found a number of shelf-fungus. None of them were very large.

But one was a brilliant green color.

I tried to photograph them several from the top

And bottom.

The biggest one was growing on a stump near a boardwalk

And the gills underneath were more colorful than the top.

We headed out of the refuge and on toward Chincoteague….the topic of tomorrow’s post.

Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge

Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge near Cambridge MD was the second refuge we visited on the Eastern Shore. The high point of the visit was probably snow geese. They were all over the ponds closest to the visitor center.

Some were very close indeed. Most of them just calmly kept an eye on me (I was using my 30x zoom to photograph them).

But one of the younger ones seemed hyper aware of my presence – maybe this goose was smarter than average.

Of course there were Canadian geese as well – ignoring everything but their own business.

In lesser numbers but just as impressive: Great Blue Herons. Note the spring plumage on the head.

The day was very cloudy. It was only 3:30 in the afternoon but already looked like dusk as we drove around the wildlife loop.

We stopped to photograph a pair of bald eagles perched on an old osprey nesting platform. They were too far away to get a really crisp picture. But I always like to see them. Blackwater was the first place I ever saw a bald eagle in the wild – back in the spring of 1990.

As we got ready to leave – a group of Canadian geese honked their departure too.