Oops! And Lesser Yellowlegs

How it happened, I do not know.  But I can tell you do not try to take pictures of birds in flight or action shots with your camera set on bracketing.  I was out photographing with my D 500 and for the first photos,  everything was fine and until I came home and downloaded the pictures I found that I somehow turned on the bracketing mode and shot a  large number of photos that were bracketed.  Because I was shooting in manual and auto ISO.  I found that usually only one picture in the set was in focus.  If I chimp the lot, I probably would have found this out sooner than arriving at home.  I missed out on some exciting sequences because of this.

Set of bracketed photos

Set of bracketed photos

Set of bracketed photos

There was a pair of lesser yellowlegs chasing each other over the pannes, which would have made a great series.  Thank goodness there were salvageable photos.

Lesser Yellowlegs Chasing a Lesser Yellowlegs

Lesser Yellowlegs Chasing a Lesser Yellowlegs

Lesser Yellowlegs Chasing a Lesser Yellowlegs

Memorial Day Beach Ramble, Plus

Allens Pond does have a number of annual events, today is Memorial Day in which we honor all our veterans.  Two veterans, Doug and myself led a beach ramble at the sanctuary today.

I arrived earlier, because I wanted to check out my piping plover to make sure they were doing all right, and were not being harassed by the killdeer.  They look like they would doing fine.  I also took some photographs of the piping plover, along with a grey catbird sitting on a post in the pannes, plus a lesser yellowlegs walking in the pannes. 

Grey Catbird

Lesser Yellowlegs

Piping Plover

Coming back to the field station, I met two birders who are invited to join the beach ramble, which they did.  Besides these two nice people the summer interns joined us on the walk and one of the interns brought her mother along.  It was a nice pleasant ramble, and both Doug and I explained about the history and natural history of Allens Pond.  The beach plums are in bloom, plus a small stand of black mustard.  Everyone had an enjoyable morning, despite a small rain shower.

Black Mustard

Doug and the Beach Ramble Group

Doug and Our Summer Interns

Beach Plum

Doug explaining about slipper shells

The ramble group looking for interesting objects and discussing what they have found already

A Mornings Birding at Horseneck Beach and Allens Pond

For today's blog I will first wish to thank Paul Champlin, our volunteer ornithologist at Allens Pond Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary, for his post about the shorebirds in the parking lot of Horseneck Beach.  The other day, Paul had posted about the large number of semipalmated plovers that he had found in parking lot three of Horseneck beach.

Semipalmated Plover

This morning, Doug, my grandson Kyle and I traveled out to Horseneck beach and went into parking lot three, and all around in the parking lot was semipalmated plovers, semipalmated sandpipers and some least sandpipers, along with a large number of different species of gulls.

Herring Gull

Semipalmated Sandpiper

Least Sandpiper

Just as we were leaving the parking lot, Doug noticed a bird high in the tree and on closer inspection, it turned out to be a Cedar Waxwing.

Cedar Waxwing

We took a walk down to the shore and there were a large number of Sanderlings, Least Sandpipers and Semipalmated Sandpipers.

Comparison of a Sandeling and a Semipalmated Plover

As we were churning to leave we noticed, what we first thought was piping plover running around, however, it turned out to be a young least tern, which was being watched over by an adult.

Least Tern Chick

Least Tern Chick and Adult

We then traveled and checked out the parking lot at Gooseberry, where black scoters were still around.

We finished up at Allens Pond where a good number of different species of birds were present including A Lesser Yellowlegs in the pannes, and a Ruddy Turnstone on the beach.

Lesser Yellowlegs

Ruddy Turnstone

We finished the morning with 44 different species of birds, so a good day was had by all.