Lesser Goldfinch versus American Goldfinch

There are three goldfinches native to the United States.  They are Lawrence Goldfinch, American Goldfinch, and lesser Goldfinch.  I have never seen a Lawrence Goldfinch and probably will have to go out to the West Coast again to try to find one.  American goldfinches a very common and are seen quite regularly, especially here in Southeastern Massachusetts.  Finally, this summer when I was in the hill country of Texas.  I finally was able to observe and photograph the Lesser Goldfinch.  For those of my readers who have not seen the Lesser Goldfinch I am posting to views of the male, along with a male American Goldfinch.

Lesser Goldfinch side view

Lesser Goldfinch back view

American Goldfinch

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Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge

The other day, two of us went down to Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge in Middletown, Rhode Island, not only to see what we could photograph, but also to enjoy the beautiful day.  Sachuest Point juts out in between the Sakonnet River, Atlantic Ocean and Sachuest Bay.  On this day, we decided to walk the Ocean view loop, which is a mile and a half in length.  Starting out right and Sachuest Bay, there was a large flock of mainly American (black)

scoters along with some common eiders.

American Scoter

 Continuing to walk along we came across the usual subjects, including American Robins, red-winged blackbirds, and the sometimes elusive to photograph yellow warblers.

Yellow Warbler

Female Red-Winged Blackbird

 Flitting around were spring azure, American copper and cabbage white butterflies.  Some of the cabbage white was smaller in size than what you usually expect, however, this is not uncommon in the first hatch of the year.

American Copper

Cabbage White Butterfly-Male

 Herring gulls flew overhead presenting us the opportunity to practice flight photography and get full frame photographs of a bird in flight.  A song sparrow presented a different view than usual.  Normally the song sparrow's hopping on the ground with their head down and feeding or sitting on a branch and singing.  This song sparrow while on the ground was sitting straight up and had a bit of a crest showing.

Song Sparrow

 Finally, a beautiful plumage American Goldfinch presented itself to have its photograph taken.

American Goldfinch

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"The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men"

Sunrise

"The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men". Now why do I say that? My plan on Tuesday morning was to wake up early and again try to capture images of the comet Ison, however, I set the alarm for quarter of 3 AM but did not turn the alarm on. So, I awoke at 5 AM, quickly got dressed and drove out to Gooseberry. The sky was getting lighter and the brilliant moon didn't help, so no pictures again of the comet. However there were great pictures of the sunrise.

Really, the only bad thing that occurred was that my Nikon D800 started acting up and given the error messages and intermittently would stop auto-focusing. When I got back to the car tried it on a different lens the same thing happened. Oh well, camera off to Nikon for repair. I had bought the camera, when it first was released in the camera has approximately 57,000 shutter activations since then.

The moon illuminating the clouds

Sunrise captured with a 500 mm lens

After pictures of the sunrise, I relaxed and waited from my birding companion Doug to show up and we did our Tuesday morning birding trip. Right in the parking lot at Gooseberry, was our first surprise, a Rusty Blackbird. Despite the brisk wind, birds were flying over. Juncos and songs powers while hopping around feeding. As we slowly walked out toward the tip of Gooseberry, we saw out on the water large groups of White-winged Scoters, Eiders, Common Loons and Horned Grebes. What was interesting was most of the rocks in the water with cormorants usually rest were covered with water or having large waves splash over them. I like the way the water was crashing over the rocks so I made photographs of it happening. The Phragmites were were really blowing in the wind, and since I used 1/1250 second shutter speed I almost completely froze the Phragmites. Near the tip when we went out onto the beach, we did see a small flock of peeps flying and landing back down on the shore. With the spotting scope we were able to identify them as Sanderlings and Dunlins. When we reached the tip, we found a flock of the least 100 or more Sanderlings and Dunlins. I sat down to be low to the ground and started moving slowly toward them, when suddenly they all took off in to a massive flight. Doug told me up a Peregrine falcon passed by and set them off. I got some nice photographs of the birds turning and swirling in the air. They came back down and started resting. On a rock just off the shore were a group of Purple Sandpipers. As I slowly approached them being low to the ground, they suddenly flew from the rock and landed just in front of me. Bingo, more pictures. As we were returning back to the parking lot, we saw a goldfinch on the ground feeding and the goldfinch say just of head of us and company us part of the way back to the parking lot.

Rusty Blackbird

American Goldfinch

Dunlins and Sanderlings resting on the beach

Great Cormorants in Flight

Waves crashing over the rocks in black and white

Waves crashing over the rocks

 

 

 This picture is the same as the black and white picture above it. I learned a new technique yesterday watching a webinar from Topaz. What you do is open the original picture in Lightroom as a Smart object, apply your filters that you want as Smart filters, open Topaz black and white also was a Smart filter and process your adjustments, and then change the blending mode of the filter to luminosity. This gives a great feel to the picture.

Dunlins and Sanderlings in-flight

Phragmites blowing in the wind

A small plant trying to survive

Great Cormorants in Flight

Dunlin and Purple Sandpiper

Ruddy Turnstone

Sachuest National Wildlife Refuge and Third Beach

Semipalmated Plover Preening

In my last blog, I told you about our encounter with the friendly juvenile cowbird.  Today I'm going to just share with you some of the other birds that we encountered during our trip to the Sachuest Marsh, Third Beach and Sachuest National Wildlife Refuge.  In fact, this is our first visit back down to Sachuest since the road was washed out during last year's hurricane in the refuge was closed until recently.

We listed five species of gulls, including a Bonaparte's Gull in breeding plumage, and a Laughing Gull in winter plumage.

Bonaparte's Gull

Laughing Gull

Shorebirds included Ruddy Turnstones, Semipalmated Plovers, Semipalmated Sandpipers, Sandelings, and a Baird's Sandpiper (but I did not get a picture of it).

Ruddy Turnstones Eating a Mussel

Sandeling Looking for Food

Semipalmated Plover and Reflection

Semipalmated Sandpiper Watching a Semipalmated Plover Bathing

There were numerous passerine's and I have included photographs of American Goldfinch and a House Finch.

American Goldfinch in Thistle

House Finch, Eating a Berry

Red-breasted Merganser Shaking off after a Dive

We saw in the distance mainly hidden in the grass a six point buck in velvet.  When rutting begins, that maybe great opportunities to obtain photographs of bucks fighting.

Passerines at Wellfleet Bay

While I was at Wellfleet Bay Audubon Sanctuary, I also spent time at the two feeders that are on either side of the path leading down into the main sanctuary.  I set up my tripod and camera on the side so I had a good view, and once the birds got used to me had no problems photographing them.  There were some difficulty, the first was when other visitors would walked down the path, the birds would scatter, but, they would return in a short period of time.  The other problem, was that the birds would fly in, grab some seeds and fly away to eat the seeds..  What I would love to have done, utilizing the techniques that Alan Murphy describes in his e-books, is set up perches, so the bird with land on it before going down and grabbing the seeds.  However, I made do with what was available.  At least some of the birds with land on branches and stay there long enough so I could obtain photographs.

American Goldfinch in winter plumage

Black-capped Chickadee

Blue Jay

Downy Woodpecker

House Sparrow

Northern Cardinal

Pine Siskin

Pine Siskin

Random Sightings at or near Allens Pond Sanctuary

Today's blog is a collection of recent photographs that I obtained in the last week and I am posting them for your enjoyment.
All these photographs were taken at Allens Pond Massachusetts Audubon sanctuary, utilizing my Nikon D800, Nikkor 500 mm f/4, 1.4 tele converter, on a tripod with a Jobu gimbal head.
Male Bobolink on top of a bush, who would not allow a close approach.

Least Terns on the beach loop.  They are behind the protected area that is roped off because of the nesting piping plovers.  When we first approached the area and were well away from the rope we still were attacked by the female least tern, but as we stopped moving, got lower down, she finally went back and landed on the sand.  We continue to watch the tern and photograph her.  We then noticed another tern flying in with a fish in its mouth.  That tern circled us a couple times and then flew to the other tern, who was calling.  The male tern came in for a landing (the picture), and proceeded to give the fish to the female.

3 years ago, on numerous times out photographing the Piping Plovers that breed on the beach, there was a pair located at the beginning of the beach loop way up from where the plovers, usually nest.  I had spoken to leave staff at the sanctuary about this, sand that I bet they are going to nest and breed in the area.  Yes, they did breed, and the area was cordoned off to protect the nest from humans.  The first and 2nd year the plover pair produced four young each year.  This year, the same event occurred with another four chicks hatching, the day before this picture was taken.  Here is one of the chicks and one of the adults.

This picture of the adult Piping Plover was taken 2 days previously, as it was running around the beach, feeding.

Yellow Warblers were flitting around in the foliage along the beach loop trail.  I was able to capture this Yellow Warbler, just as it took off from the branch where it was singing.

In the same area, American Goldfinches also would make their presence known.

Along the road, by the culvert, Willits were flying back and forth, perching on posts and then down into the marsh grass to feed.

Saturday, at the grand opening of the sanctuaries, newly renovated stone barn, I had a discussion with Norman Buck a boat a bird that I do have a my life list, but I do not have any photographs of.  Since the end of April, he has had around his property a male Dickcissel, which apparently has not bred in the state for 150 years.  He invited me to visit his house, which I did and was able to obtain some nice photographs of the Dickcissel.  In fact, the bird allowed me to approach somewhat close to it, and it sat in the tree and sang for at least 10 minutes. before it flew back across the field to the other location where it hangs out.

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