Sunday, November 7, 2010

Bad Bird Photos of the Weekend


See that blob on the left branch of the snag in the middle of the image? That blob is a white-tailed kite. (Click this or any image to enlarge. Although it doesn't really make much of a difference here.) A rare stray to my home state of New Jersey, this is only the second visitor on record.


The bird was easy to see as it was hunting over a small island in the Barnegat Bay. It is the upper bird in this image, the lower bird obviously being a red-tailed hawk. 

Well, obvious in the scopes we were using.


It spent quite a bit of time kiting over the island. And while we were watching it interacted with several other raptors including the aforementioned red-tail, a peregrine falcon, and a merlin. Swooping and diving on each. It also had success hunting, although we had no idea what it caught.


And while it was easy to identify in a scope it was definitely a "speck bird", photography wise.

See it just above the tree line in the center of the image? Yeah, that's pretty much what it looked like.

It was cool to see nevertheless.

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