While I’ve seen my share of Canadian Canada Geese since moving to the Shore, this is the first year for seeing Snow Geese. And like so much here, it is the scale of things that makes it that much more interesting. Rather than one goose or a small flock, more than a thousand of the birds arrived. They may stay on the Shore for the bulk of the winter before starting to move north again. Most of these birds like the sea side but given the inclement weather they’ve made some adjustments to their patterns and preferences.
As you can see in the footage, it’s been damp, cold, and gray for the past several days. Still, the epic proportions of the bird and the size of the flock (swarm is more like it) make for spectacular visuals during the morning coffee !
If you can identify the bird, please comment. The image is of poor quality but it was the best I could do on short notice. I’ll try to get a better image if/when it returns.
We are near the end of the raptor migration here on the Eastern Shore and given the farmhouse is not near water, I did not expect to see much without putting in some effort. However, over the past week, I have noticed a few hawks hunting the fields for food. This morning I was checking out some project work and was surprised to see this bird at the edge of the lawn, about 400 ft away from the farmhouse.
Like all good UFO sightings and photos, the story is vague and the pictures are all blurry. It could have been most anything. In this case it could not be confused for a weather balloon but otherwise, most bets are off. (FYI – a point-’n-shoot is not proper equipment for fast moving objects.)
I’ve been watching, and attempting to record, the defensive behavior of the common Barn Swallow. When they feel one of the nests is in danger, all of the swallows take to the air and dive and swoop and make noise. The goal is to confuse the predator and then to scare it away with "attacks" consisting of fast fly bys with screeches at the moment when the bird is closest to the predator.
The video captures a few of these dives and starting at 00:55s you can see a pass in slow motion. This is followed by another pass in slow motion and then still frames.
For those who are encrusted in ice or buried under a foot or more of snow or blasted by bone chilling winds, here is 3 minutes and 30 seconds of escape-ism.
I finally picked up a firewire cable and connected my relatively ancient Sony video camcorder (still uses tapes). I’m no videographer but I enjoyed watching the Great Egret at the end of the day this past summer. Over the course of a week or two, I took my video camera out around 6pm and sat for a while, overlooking the marsh and the small creek leading from the Chesapeake Bay back to the rental property. I managed to get some shots of the egret fishing, walking, and occasionally taking flight. I had about 40 minutes of footage. When I cut out the really shaky stuff, the bad footage, and the “content free” moments, I ended up with a few usable clips.
Microsoft Movie Maker did a reasonable job of loading the footage from the camera onto my PC and then let me edit segments and piece them together. It was all pretty easy.
