sophiasperd's Favorites

Continuing at Union Station. I arrived at 6:30PM and the owl appeared at 7:05 sitting on atop the building to the left. It stayed in that spot for just over 2 hours mostly preening and keeping watch. Just after 9PM she put on a great hunting exhibition chasing birds up and down the facade for 10-15 mins before settling back in on one of the statutes on the facade.

Previous game camera trigger of a goshawk 30 minutes before, bookended by marten triggers. Then some drama! A goshawk appears from the left, lands briefly, and then lifts off again to meet a second goshawk in a brief tussle in the air. The birds are within view of the camera over the course of 35 seconds, with one eventually flying off with the other remaining on the ground, slightly off-camera to the lower right. Exciting observation! @caiwatha

The first time I had ever seen this, i videoed the entire event as well from entry to exit. It was as if this species swims all the time. I sent it to a frogmouth expert and she had never seen that before. The bird chose to swim and flew away very easily after its swim. There appeared to be no explanation for the bird swimming as it was not particularly hot or anything unusual.

hunting from nearby tree, about 10:30am, looking intently down at snow, then landed and mantled for a couple of minutes, burying its head into the snow several times before flying off in the opposite direction

Adult toucan (Ramphastos ambiguus) with leucism

Address: Unión de Guápiles, Puerto Limón, Costa Rica

Exact coordinates: 10.232897 N, -83.868262W

Fecha: 2019/09/18 (11:20 am)

Credits: Carlos Bolaños

Note: for more information you can contact me:

Dr. Óscar M. Chaves
email: ochaba@gmail.com

Location accurate. Impressive watching these terns dive-bombing!

Kayak daytrip from West Lake to the Lungs. I am going to post a ton of red mangrove observations because I was using my phone's geotagging of photos to have a nice log of my track and was too busy paddling to do a proper bioblitz. Some birds and other stuff mixed in.

Other observations (will be a few days before I finish all of them):
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?nelat=25.239682028865975&nelng=-80.62550471224715&on=2021-01-03&place_id=any&swlat=25.15425179059776&swlng=-80.9224788734213&user_id=joemdo&verifiable=any

Red-winged Blackbird
near Stewardson, Illinois
1 June 1989

I'm posting this record just for the general interest of a Red-winged Blackbird with one white wing. Whether a partial albino, or a partial leucistic bird, I'm not sure. A local farmer told my wife and me that this bird had been on his farm for three summers. The bird left in the fall with the other Red-wingeds and came back in the spring. I watched it for about 30 minutes. It vocalized like any other Red-winged BB and interacted with other Red-wingeds normally. It was pretty flashy to see in flight, however. Three shots posted. These images scanned from old color slides.