Another wildlife refuge

On my Facebook bird group I saw that there were baby great horned owls down in Delaware at Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge, so I convinced Davey to drive down there last week.

My first owl!

A few other firsts for me that day, too!

Brown thrasher, hiding in the brush

Black-necked stilt

Green-winged teal

And not a first, but still awesome...

Possibly a juvenile bald eagle

And a turkey vulture!

What a great day we had! I can't wait to go back!

4/24/15 at Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge.

Canon 7D Mark II with a Canon 75-300mm zoom lens. All at 300 mm hand held. Cropped and corrected with Photoshop "smart fix."

Birding down the shore

Pictures from April 15 at Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, Oceanville NJ. First outing with my new camera. I had a little trouble with the settings. Here's what the original photo looked like before cropping and correcting:

Dark, and hard to see.

So I cropped them all and ran them through Photoshop's "smart fix" automatic correction feature. Here's what I ended up with:

Blue Winged Teal

Greater Yellowlegs

The same Yellowlegs, Greater because his beak is way longer than his head.

Snowy Egret, told from the Great because of his dark beak and head plume

Osprey, taking nesting materials back to its platform

Another osprey with nest materials, being chased by a seagull

Best osprey picture, in the nest

Taken with my new camera, Canon 7D Mark II with a Canon 75-300mm zoom lens. All at 300 mm hand held or leaning on the car to steady the camera. Cropped and corrected with Photoshop "smart fix."

West Deptford Eagle!

I've always been interested in birds, but now that I have a new camera I'm taking it to the next level. So I don't lose the history, I'm going to post some of my bird pictures here.

So to begin, here's the juvenile bald eagle I found down on the river at Riverwinds. It was in the inlet just southwest of the Community Center on April 13.

It was a beautiful day, so instead of walking around the track inside, I decided to go outside. I walked along the paved pathway that goes to the south and through the leafless trees saw a bigass bird fly down to the water. There was a fairly steep bank to get down there, but the intrepid explorer *choke* didn't hesitate. Probably pure luck that I didn't fall and break something.

When I first got down to the water, the sun was in my eyes and I couldn't see the bird. Then I walked a little ways and there it was. It was eating something, probably a fish.

I walked along the shore to try to get away from that in-your-face sunshine and got a slightly better picture.

And that's the story of the West Deptford eagle, one of the most exciting bird days of my life.

Photos taken with my pocket camera, Canon PowerShot Elph 530HS, fully zoomed (12x optical). Cropped and photoshopped because of the backlight. And also because I lightened the setting to try to compensate, so all the pictures were too light.