Shoot 2024-05-10-135848 — philthompson.me

Birds
Mandel

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Shoot 2024-05-10-135848

I had a great two-day span where I added four birds to my county list including three lifers.

Down at the wetlands, I saw a good variety of birds including Yellow-headed Blackbird, Red-necked Phalarope, and Black-necked Stilt. Toward the end of my walk I saw a small raptor perched in a tree. It was a good ways off, and I couldn't quite see what it was on the back of the camera after taking a few photos. But I was carrying my spotting scope, and it provided much better views. It was quite light in color overall, and didn't have any prominent black mustache. I was hoping it was a Merlin... and after reviewing the photos it appears to be a "Prairie" subspecies of Merlin: a lifer!

The next day, the conditions and timing were pretty good for a trip to the coast. Almost immediately upon arriving, I trained my binoculars on a large dark long-necked bird... it turned out to be not a cormorant but a new county bird: Brant! I managed to switch to my camera and take a few shots (above all I'm collecting photos of county birds). After a quick scan of the area afterwards I didn't notice any large gatherings of scoters or loons or anything, nor any large groups of peeps running along the shoreline. But a small brownish bird caught my eye. It immediately seemed to be something unusual for me. I was hoping it was a Black-bellied Plover, which would be a new lifer, but it didn't look right. After a quick look at some candidate species in the Merlin app it appeared to be a female breeding plumage Pacific Golden-Plover! This would be a more rare bird, and a lifer as well.

I spent much of the next half hour watching this bird, and trying to get a good photo of it. I tried getting low, and even laying in the sand, but the sunlight was too strong. There was a lot of heat shimmer in the air and just about all of my photos were really soft. I figured I only had a shot to get a sharp photo if I took a lot of exposures, so I went to town and ended up with about 1,500 shots of this bird.

Some time later, some other beachgoers spooked the bird up onto the jetty where I was standing. I got some eye-level shots with much less heat shimmer, albeit shooting toward the sun. I then climbed down the jetty and circled around and managed to get some shots with the sun at my back.

This plover was very cooperative, and the beach and jetty were very quiet — she wasn't disturbed by any people or dogs aside from the one occasion when she flew up onto the jetty. She sat still for long stretches, and wasn't really foraging. I am guessing she was just resting up for a while before continuing north to her breeding grounds somewhere in the arctic.

To cap things off, as I was heading back to the car, I found my third county bird and second lifer of the day: Marbled Murrelet. This bird was small but not as small as I was expecting. I didn't get a great photo but it was great to finally find one and watch it fish for a while.

My "birds in review" collages can be found here.

Signature

📄 hashes-2024-05-10-135848.txt

📄 hashes-2024-05-10-135848.txt.sig

The above hashes-<date>.txt file contains SHA-256 hashes of all the photos from this shoot. The hashes-<date>.txt.sig is a signature of that hashes file, created with my PGP key. The signature file itself was written to both the Bitcoin Cash and Algorand blockchains, in the OP RETURN and Note fields respectively, using the transactions below. In short, this proves that these photos and the signature both existed at the time the transactions were written to the Bitcoin Cash and Algorand blockchains. This blog post has more details.

view the BCH tx on blockchair.com: 8b4b5b8c2c5a7527104cd387ce3f6cd43e0fcda94bb4484f09ec69e7af0b312b

view the ALGO tx on explorer.perawallet.app: 4TIL5Y2EWARORUXZXSZDAVSB4NYFBXMU2O3GFS6VXIEYO2Z3R5SQ

11:50AM Monday May 06, 2024

Hooded Merganser

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Hooded Merganser

11:57AM Monday May 06, 2024

Savannah Sparrow

11:57AM Monday May 06, 2024

Savannah Sparrow

11:57AM Monday May 06, 2024

Savannah Sparrow

11:57AM Monday May 06, 2024

Savannah Sparrow

11:57AM Monday May 06, 2024

Savannah Sparrow

12:02PM Monday May 06, 2024

Barn Swallow

12:02PM Monday May 06, 2024

Barn Swallow

12:02PM Monday May 06, 2024

Barn Swallow

12:02PM Monday May 06, 2024

Barn Swallow

12:02PM Monday May 06, 2024

Barn Swallow