Killdeer!

The other day I took a walk around the neighborhood, including around the middle school. I got over there around 6 p.m. and was shocked to see about 8 killdeer in the grass of the athletic field there.

Of course I didn't have a camera, just my phone. I took a lot of pictures, but none of them were good enough to get a positive ID. Here's the best one:

So I went back over in my car the next day at about the same time. Nothing. Disappointed, I drove around the school and then decided to give it one more go.

Just two of them, but I got some awesome pictures!

The setting sun highlighted them perfectly!

I love that you can see their golden eyes!

Such cool birds!

I saw some turkeys that evening, too. Some of those pictures another day.

Canon 7D Mark II with Tamron 150-600mm zoom lens. All at 600 mm leaning on my car window. Cropped, sharpened and corrected with Photoshop "smart fix."

Burning question

I grew up in Northern NY State, and we always had bird feeders. One of our more common visitors was the Black-Capped Chickadee.

So when we moved to South Jersey, set up our feeders and the chickadees came, it never occurred to me that they weren't the black-capped variety. But they aren't!

Even though they look almost exactly alike, and I can't tell them apart at all, apparently our chickadees are the Carolina type.

Here's the Sibley guide to telling them apart:
http://www.sibleyguides.com/bird-info/black-capped-chickadee/black-capped-carolina-chickadee/ . It doesn't help.

All my pics are Carolina Chickadees.

Who knew?

Canon 7D Mark II with Tamron 150-600mm zoom lens. Taken at 250-350mm on a tripod. Cropped but otherwise uncorrected.