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Wednesday, May 13, 2020

What's up?

Amanda, who occasionally comments, said she is a birder  and she looked up "Ohio Rare Bird Alert, and the only thing I can find for your county, and it seems right in your neck of the (literal) woods is a Kirtland's warbler. They would be in the bushes, and need a big lens if you're photographing them since they're a small bird. When I was in Indiana, I used to make pilgrimage every year to bird the Lake Erie shore just west of Cleveland to see the warblers; it was heaven for a birder!"

Who would have known there is an Ohio Rare Bird Alert!  Thank you Amanda. First thing this morning I called the park, because the fellows were on park property, and a very disinterested ranger told me they probably were birders, but that’s all he could/would tell me.  If you google Kirtland’s warbler, you’ll see a pretty little warbler and a habitat that goes straight through Ohio and ends in the Upper Peninsula.

Amanda’s blog is St. Ann’s Reel, though she hasn’t posted for several years. While I was googling, I checked out St. Ann’s Reel, also one of my all-time favorite songs. You can hear it fiddled “Irish” or “Bluegrass” style. I like Irish myself; Bluegrass is just a little flatter. If you can watch the fingering, the neck, under the strings is worn about bare.

I went out today to check the flowers. We have one final cold night coming on. The mandivillas are fine. Their leaves are not overly fragile. A little more leather like. They will be fine. I keep trying to take a picture of the allium, and I cannot get it in focus, in the brilliant light of day. The poor old allium flower is squeezing itself open, one flower leaf at a time.


I looked up at hawks circling overhead in the brilliant noon time sun. I could see nothing on the screen, it was too bright. This was literal point and shoot. I cropped them small enough to keep only what I wanted, the moon, the birds, the sun. I could not crop them small enough to locate the hook at the tip of a hawk’s wing, so I do not know if these fellows are hawks or buzzards.






23 comments:

  1. Getting a bit warmer every day. We have the odd wet day over the next week but that's a good thing when we are trying to get planting.

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  2. Looked more buzzard but you are right. Hard to tell. Nice 92 degrees here today!

    Betty

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  3. That makes sense that they would need such big lenses then. I love birds, but am not a birder. I would like to know more about them though.

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  4. That makes perfect sense that these guys are birders! My brother is a birder and he runs around with a camera and lens like those. How nice that Amanda figured out the "Ohio Rare Bird Alert" and that the warbler was probably what those guys were photographing. Thanks for letting us know.

    I think your flowers are going to do good since they have such a good flower Mom! Those are great pictures you took showing both the sun and the moon, not to mention the circling hawks!

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  5. Hari OM
    Well, fun to know about the alert... hope at least one of them got a shot! Yes, those look more to be buzzards, with the flatter wingline. YAM xx

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  6. They look like buzzards from where I sit. But who knows? Not me.
    I hope that when the warm weather gets to you it makes you happy. Our hot weather is about to bear down on us.
    Sigh.

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  7. St Anne's Reel is a staple of local fiddlers. I used it recently as a sound track to one of my videos, the Silly Walk one. https://youtu.be/59MMUGE3ARE

    I even gave it a shot when I was fiddling a bit about 10 years ago.

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  8. Bird Alerts - who knew? (Birders, likely, but not the rest of us!)

    It's very hard to take digital pictures when there's too much light to see the display, isn't it? You did well at catching those birds and even better the sun and moon as a bonus.

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  9. They look like buzzards to me. You managed to get both the sun and the moon in the pictures? That was a feat.

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  10. Kirtland's Warbler anywhere but in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan is a rarity. It is found near Mio, MI which is the only place I have ever seen it, and my first bird was a beautiful singing male. How great is that!

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  11. It is hard to tell if they buzzards or hawks when they are flying over. I fear for the little animals when I think they are hawks; I fear for myself when I see the buzzards sitting on the trees outside my windows. I think they are checking me out.

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  12. Ah. To fly between the sun and the moon. My dream.

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  13. Sunny blue sky - we could use more right now

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  14. We had feeders on and off for years. G took them down when sparrows took to eating everything. I miss the birds.

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  15. You are a woman with so many interests. I know I would like St Anne's Reel.

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  16. I like to watch the birds just for a little entertainment although I am always on the lookout for hawks, owls and eagles. There used to be a funny video on youtube about a guy who gets obsessed with bird watching for, like, two weeks. That could be me. Then I'd move onto sand castle building or something.

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  17. Boy that sun is bright!
    At least we now know what those huge lenses were for.

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  18. We have an Ontario 'rare bird' alert too. I just looked it up for the fun of it.
    Years ago we were prowling a cemetary and taking photos when we noticed turkey vultures circling overhead. I took video of them on complete trust that I was actually catching them in the view finder. It worked. I often watch it just to hear the wonder in my voice. There were so very many of them.

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  19. buzzard. hawks wings don't separate at the ends like open fingers when they ride the thermals.

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  20. Nice pictures! The sun is so bright it's almost hard to look at them. It's cooled off again here - back to the high 70's. That's fine because I know "Summer is Coming".

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