Saturday, July 26, 2008

SPS: More from the Township

We revisited East Donegal Twp Park Thursday evening. This time I came a little more prepared for birding, but I still managed to take mostly "sasquatch" pictures, where you can only make out something blurry and obscured in the trees, far in the distance :)

But on the way to the bird area (a backwater eddy in the river), I found a lovely reflection in a shallow pool. The presence of, well, pond scum, gave certain areas a watercolor effect.

This bird is blurry, but not obscured, so he makes the blog. Quite a few great blue herons showed up to fish in the shallow water - the first time we visited the park, I counted 10 or 11 that flew by us within the space of about two minutes.

And here's one that's obscured but relatively in focus. The mystery bird of the evening was this fellow, later identified as an immature black-crowned night heron. They are much smaller than the great blues, and this one stuck to the shoreline. So mostly I could see bits and pieces of bird through the heavy vegetation.

Through the course of about an hour, we were able to see several great blues, a group of Canada geese, a mama mallard and her brood, the black-crowned night heron, two green herons, a great egret, a kingfisher, and the normal complement of swallows, finches, etc. This place is definitely on my bird hang-out list now!

3 comments:

HFD60 said...

Keep trying you'll get right...Birds are tough, you never seem to have enough glass..I wind up deleting more than I keep some days...

Unknown said...

Even pond scum can be interesting :) Love the herons. I've never seen a baby before.

Les Barr said...

Very Nice! Have been to Asateaque Island a few years ago, but have never gotten the chance to see the wild horse's close up. No idea why.