Willet (Tringa semipalmata)

Willet in flight

Another harbinger of spring is the arrival of the , the Willet is a large shorebird, which announces its presence with a series of piercing calls that announce their presence - pill-will-willet.  They also have a number of other calls: when approached - high-pitched, agitated kip-kip-kip, wiek, and kreeliii alarm calls.  Willits can be recognized in flight by their boldly patterned black and white wings.  Willits are a large stocky shorebird with gray legs, and they long, straight, dark and stout bill.  During the breeding season, the portion of the bill closest to the face can be white in color.  Breeding plumage adults are grayish-Brown with darker markings.  While the non-breeding adults are plainer gray above.  There are two subspecies of Willets, the Eastern and Western.  Here in Massachusetts, especially during fall migration.  We will end up with both species.  Eastern Willets will breed in the coastal salt marshes, barrier beaches and on islands.  Western Willets move inland to nest in grasslands and prairies near freshwater.

Pair of Willets on the rock calling

Willet.  On rock with its wings up showing the distinctive patent

Willet, looking skyward for a predator

Willet in a Evergreen calling

Close-up of a Willets face

Willet standing on a post

During our birding walk on Tuesday, Willits were the most common shorebird that was present on Gooseberry Neck and Allens Pond Audubon Sanctuary.  There were a few piping plovers and least sandpipers and the yearly Clapper Rail made its presence known in the pannes at Allen Pond.

Warning: ticks are back in force, after walking through the brush on Gooseberry, I pulled about a dozen from my pants.  So remember take precautions against TICKS.

Leonid Meteor Shower– November 17

Everyone who lives in the southeastern Massachusetts area is welcome to join me at Allens Pond Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary Stone Barn to observe and if you want to photograph the Leonid Meteor Shower.  The event, which is free, will start on Saturday night, November 17 at midnight and will last until dawn's early light.
Right now the forecast is for mostly clear skies with the temperatures in the 30s.  Dress warm, bring a chair so you can be comfortable and a flashlight.  If you want to try to capture a meteor with your camera, my recommendations are: single lens reflex camera with the wide-angle lens (maximum 35mm), tripod, remote release, if available, extra batteries, additional cards for the camera.  Prior to photographing I will help you set up the camera to give you the best chance of trying to capture a meteor.  I will have a laptop available to do some post processing and if you want to avail yourself of this, please bring a USB flash drive.  We will have snacks, coffee and hot chocolate available.  The Stone Barn has restrooms.  Stone Barn Farm is located at 786 Horseneck Road in Dartmouth, MA. You may park in the circular driveway in front of the house or in the driveway in front of the tractor barn.
In Google maps, if you put in the address it is wrong.  Here are directions, from the junction of Interstate 195 and route 88 in Westport, Continue toward Horseneck Beach, and take a left at the lights at Hix Bridge Road, continue on Hix Bridge Road and take a right onto Horseneck road (there is a gas station on the left at the intersection) continue on Horseneck road until you Reach Horseneck Road East, take a left and continue down approximately 1/3 of a mile, just beyond the vision Street, and the Quonset nurseries there is a dirt road on the right that leads into the Stone Barn property.

The Orionoids Meteor Shower.

Meteor in Right Lower Side. Bright "Star"  is Jupiter

I spent the last two nights from midnight 4 AM at Allens Pond Audubon Sanctuary's, Dartmouth Massachusetts, Stone Barn, observing and photographing The Orionoids Meteor Shower.
The first night, I held a workshop on how to photograph meteors and the night sky.  Afterwards we set up chairs and are tripods and cameras and sat down to enjoy the show.  The skies were clear as a bell and there was very little light pollution coming from the surrounding cities and towns.  The temperature was in the 50s and it was comfortable long as you were dressed for the occasion.  The advantage of this location is that it is close, The Stone Barn offers restrooms, and a kitchen.  There was the cookies, food and coffee available all night.
Both nights, the meteor show was great with the Sunday into Monday event being the best with up to 40 to 60 meteors per hour.
The hardest part, was trying to capture meteors in the camera, most of them lasted only a few seconds and were faint, which did not give enough light to capture them.  However, we did obtain some photographs of the meteor shower.

Fish-eye Lens View

I also did a time lapse sequence, which demonstrated the movement of the stars through the heavens plus a couple of meteors.

Sky Time Lapse with Meteors

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The Stone Barn is an excellent location to observe the Celestreal events, because of its close location to some major cities and yet, because it is deep in the country so that light pollution is not a major factor.
For the remainder of this year, there are two more meteor events with the Geminid's on December 13 and 14th probably being the best.  I will plan to have another event at the Stone Barn for this meteor show.
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Macro Photography Workshop

On September 22, I will be leading a macro-photography workshop at the Great Neck Sanctuary in Wareham Massachusetts, from 7 AM to 10 AM or longer.  We will meet in the parking lot at Great Neck for a short talk on macro photography, and then hike into the woods to see what we can find to photograph.  There will be mushrooms, berries, plants, tree bark, small creatures and maybe some turtles. 
Equipment needed will include a  DSLR or bridge camera, tripod, macro, or zoom lens, cable release, if you have it, and the willingness to get down and dirty.
You can sign up for this workshop at: https://www.massaudubon.org/catalog/listing.php?program_code=211-AP12SU1
Hope to see you there.
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Black Saddlebags

On Wednesday, August 29, I traveled first down to Gooseberry Neck, where I first laid on the sand and photograph some of the shorebirds and then obtained more photographs of the Black Scoters.  I went over to the field station at Allens Pond, hoping to obtain some more macro photographs of the butterflies and other creatures in the butterfly garden.  However, there was a stiff wind blowing, which made it difficult to photograph.  But never say never, I walked down along the trail to see if there was anything interesting to photograph.  During my walk, I noticed a number of large dragonflies that seem to have very dark hind wings.  The dragonflies seem to be always on the wing, although occasionally they would hover..  I found one area, somewhat protected from the wind and one or two dragonflies would hover in this area.  I set up the tripod with the macro lens and with pre-focusing, I was able to capture one of the dragonflies in flight. The dragonfly then landed and allowed me time to obtain more images.  When I got home and downloaded the pictures into my computer and utilized.  "A Field Guide to the Dragonflies and Damselflies of Massachusetts.",  I found that I had another life species of dragonfly - Black Saddlebags.
The Black Saddlebags (Tramea lacerata) is one of the skimmer dragonfly species that are found throughout North America.  He gets its name from its distinctive wings with characteristic black blotches at the proximal end, making the dragonfly appear as it is swearing saddlebags.  Black Saddlebags of found out through much of Mexico and the United States as far north as Maine, northernmost Vermont, and Montana.  It ranges self to Baja California and is also found on the Hawaiian Islands the Florida Keys, Bermuda and Cuba.  In Canada, they are found in Québec, Ontario and British Columbia..
The Black Saddlebags is a relatively large dragonfly at about 5 centimeters in length. The body is thin and black, and the female may have lighter spotting or mottling dorsally. The head is much wider than the rest of the body and is dark brown in color.

Some populations of this dragonfly migrate.  Both the larvae and adult forms are predators of mosquitoes, so they are a highly helpful insect to have in the wet areas where they congregate.


Everything that I have read about the Black Saddlebags is that they usually do not perch, so I was very lucky in getting one to stay on the twig of the tree and allow me to photograph it.

Perseids Yes-Photos, No.

We returned Sunday evening into Sunday night to try to obtain photographs of the Perseids meteor shower.  The night started out with almost completely clear skies and occasional cloud.  We saw a number of meteors, however, were not able to capture them in the camera because of three reasons.  The first reason, we were not photographing at the time they occurred and secondly, as it got later in the night and the temperature dropped the camera lenses fogged up due to the amount of water vapor in the year that condensed on them.  The final reason was just when the show was going to get great clouds and fog came in and obscured the sky.  We waited for a half-hour and it did not clear up.  In fact, when we arrived back at the house, the skies were clear, we could see some meteors, but because of the ambient light from the street lamps and house lights made it difficult to obtain a photograph.

I had a 2nd camera set up with a fisheye lens to obtain an hour exposure and create star trails.  Because of the fogged lens and then the clouds I only captured a portion of the trails. I did not expect the fogging, so I didn't use the trick that might friend Roman taught me.  The trick is to utilize hand warmers attached to the barrel of the lens to prevent fogging.

Oh well, there are more meteor showers coming during the rest of the year and we will try again.  Never Say Never!

Perseids Meteor Shower, No; Little Visitor, Yes.

I held my workshop on photographing meteors Saturday night and hopefully we will going to be able to capture the Perseids meteor shower.  I hosted the workshop at the capstone Barn of Allens Pond Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary, since it is out in the woods and there is less light interference from the surrounding cities.  Besides a PowerPoint presentation on photographing meteors, since there was time available until it beeped grateful viewing, I also gave some introductory tips on using Light Room 4.

However, the weather was against us, and it remained cloudy until around 1 AM when there was some breaks in the clouds.  Stars were visible, but no meteors were seen.  And again, the clouds came in so we quit.  The plan is to return Sunday night, and weather permitting try again.





While moving a tripod, low and behold, on the leg was out tiny visitor-a gray tree frog.  It apparently came in through the open door and climbed on the tripod leg.  I placed him on some leaves that were in a vase and took some photographs and then released the gray tree frog back to the outdoors, where it belongs.  It was a welcome visitor and gave us something different to photograph.



Despite not getting any photographs of meteors a good time was had by all

PERSEIDS METEOR SHOWER WILL BE HERE IN A MONTH!

The Perseids meteor shower will peak between August 11 and August 13.  This meteor shower could have numbers of medias close to 100 per hour.

I will be leading a all night session for Allens Pond Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary, utilizing the Stone Barn location.  We will meet At the Stone Barn at around 8 PM and continue until at least 4 PM, the next morning.

The evening will start with a presentation on what to look for and how to photograph the meteor shower.  We will then go out into the field had set up for a long night.

The Stone Barn has restrooms, a kitchen, and there will be refreshments available.  If you want to sign up can do online at http://www.massaudubon.org/catalog/listing.php?program_code=230-AP12SU1.

Participants will need a camera with a wide-angle lens, sturdy tripod, shutter release, a flashlight with a red lens, insect repellent (preferably without DEET), and plenty of storage cards for your camera.

For those that want to, click okay will be able to view some of their photographs on my computer and learn about post processing.  If you are interested in this, bring a flash drive so you pictures can be downloaded onto the flash drive.

I hope to see you there to watch this fantastic sky show.

Taken January 2012 at Horseneck  Beach

Osprey Monitoring and Banding the Osprey Chicks on the Westport River

On Tuesday, I was honored to join Anna Salinas and Peter Deichmann, the Osprey monitors of Allens Pond Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary, as they went to count and band Osprey on the East branch of the Westport River.

First a little history, the Osprey program was started by Gil and Jo Fernandez, who in the course of 40 years installed nearly 100 breeding platforms in the Westport River and Allens Pond.  Since 2002, the Westport River Watershed Alliance and Allens Pond Wildlife Sanctuary have been monitoring the breeding activities of the Osprey.
The three of us went in a small motor boat, which included an extension ladder and a old oar.





Extension ladder would be used to climb up to the nests and the old oar was used as a protection against certain Osprey, who were very aggressive in dive bombing the monitors.  The oar held straight up in the air so the the Osprey would just swerve away, it was not utilize to hit the Osprey. 
Most of the Osprey adults would just leave the nest and circle around overhead. 







We motored over to the East branch of the Westport River..  The Westport River is made up of 2 separate branches the East and West branch, and there are Osprey nest on, both of the branches.
We checked 11 nests and the team banded 10 birds on 5 platforms.  Some of the nests were abandoned.

Preparing the bands

Banding

Osprey chick giving the "look" after being banded

A dead Osprey chick was found at the base of one of the platforms.  The question was, did the bird jumped out on its own, but did a predator such as a great horned owl, come and scare the bird off the nest.  One of the nest had 2 young chicks along with one unhatched egg..  As I wrote in the previous blog, we also rescued one Osprey and placed it in a nest, hoping that it will survive.

I climbed up the latter to look at one of the nest and photographed two young chick still in down . There also was an unhatched egg in the nest.
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This project needs support of volunteers and sponsorship of the platforms.  You can sponsor a platform by going to http://westportosprey.org/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=5&category_id=2&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=19&vmcchk=1&Itemid=19 or by contacting the sanctuary at 508-636-2437



                                                                                                                                                                                                            As an aside: Allens Pond is holding their 9th Annual Duck Derby August 17 and 18th and the Grand Prize Is Dinner for 2 Anywhere in the World (including transportation and 2-night stay).  The costs of a duck is $10 and you can adopt your ducks online 









https://secure2.convio.net/mas/site/Donation2?2740.donation=form1&df_id=2740&JServSessionIdr004=68c6ygkfc3.app201a
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The Rescue

Today's blog was going to be about the Osprey monitoring program at Allens Pond Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary.  However, that will be in the next blog.  Today is about the RESCUE.  What rescue you say?  Well, while we were out monitoring and banding osprey on the East branch of the Westport River, a father and his daughter came up to us in a kayak and told about and osprey chick that they had found the evening before in the grass of the river. 




They took the Osprey chick and placed it on a rock on one of the islands in the river and today come back to try to give some food to the Osprey chick.
However, it would not eat.  The Osprey monitors Anna and Pete were not certain what to do about the chick.  We did go and look at the chick and they did determine that there was no food in the crop.  We returned back to land, and contacted Alan, who is in charge of the program, who advised Anna and Pete to collect the chick and place it into one of the nest that had chicks of the same age, but no more than two chicks in the nest.  So, we returned back to the island collected the Osprey chick, banded it, and went to one of the platform nests that only contain one chick of about the same age as our rescue and placed the chick into the nest.  Hopefully, the adults will feed the new chick, as well as their old chick and it will survive.  The chick will be followed up and monitored next week.  Keep your fingers crossed.

Anna Rescueing the Osprey

Anna Rescueing the Osprey

Banding the Osprey

Traveling in the boat to the platform

Placing the Osprey in the nest

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