So it’s been well over a month since I’ve written anything. Oops.
Birding has slowed down the for summer, and I feel like I’ve profiled all the nearby parks and natural areas in past posts.
I’ve also been lazy.
Summer does that.
I have some videos that I haven’t posted yet, all of them from May and June. As I’ve been making more videos I’ve also been critiquing them.
Take the following video for example:
I like that it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The bird starts off out-of-focus and obscured. We get a few seconds of it in focus to examine its field marks. Finally, it flies off, as Warbling Vireos are allergic to staying still. What I don’t like about the video is that it’s short.
The next few videos are longer but they don’t have, for lack of the better word, a plot like that first one has. That bugs me even though these are videos of real life, not a scripted movie or a nature documentary with spliced footage. They’re still cool looks at the birds and their behavior, but I don’t like them nearly as much as the vireo vid.
Even though summer is slow birding, I have seen some first-of-year birds since my last post.
May 22nd
177: Eastern Wood-pewee
May 25th
178: Red-eyed Vireo
179: Black-billed cuckoo- a really good look at one at the Spring Green Preserve
June 1st- birding with extended family
180: Willow Flycatcher
July 6th
181: Black Tern- I saw half of a reported breeding pair at a nearby pond. This was also my first sighting of one in Dane County.
182: Peregrine Falcon- flying over a friend and me on the isthmus. Kinda wish I had more to say but it was the worst look I ever got of one.
I also had a chance to work on my Iowa list again on a day trip into Dubuque.
June 22nd- a day at the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium and downtown Dubuque with three friends
30: Barn Swallow
31: European Starling
32: House Finch
33: American White Pelican- the star of the show. It landed nearby in the harbor and caught a fish.
34: House Sparrow
35: Rock Pigeon
36: Chimney Swift
37: Northern Cardinal
So far I haven’t seen any birds in Iowa that I haven’t seen in Wisconsin and that’s the only other state I’ve been to this year.
I’ll start posting more again. I still gotta find some of the breeding grassland birds before the summer ends.