Birder's Eye View

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

End of one journey, beginning of another


The past few days kept me busy out in the field as I finished up my final research project for Field Ornithology. Given the short amount of time we were allowed to do our research, I chose to compare species diversity and abundance at one of our ponds in the morning vs. the afternoon.



It wasn't all that hard to do, and mainly entailed hiking around the pond twice a day to count birds and inevitably led to some good photo ops, including the above 3 pictures (Great Blue Heron, Anhinga, and Pine Warbler, respectively).


On Tuesday we took a field trip to another local nature preserve where I added a good number of birds to my year list.


Photo quiz! Can you tell what this little headless guy is?

Some of our findings included a Caspian Tern (somewhat rare for this area), Black-and-White, Palm, and Yellow-rumped Warblers, Green Heron, Red-winged Blackbird, Red-shouldered Hawk, and Belted Kingfisher among others.


For all the birds we saw, there seemed to be just as many aligators. The above one is just a baby -- take a look below!



Now THAT's an aligator.


Northern Mockingbird giving us a close look

And thus, my fabulous 3 weeks of Field Ornithology have come to a close. The final exam was today, along with our research project presentations which all went surprisingly well.

The lovely thing about the end of one adventure is that there is always another waiting just around the corner. My next one starts in 3 days when I head off to the UK. I'm not sure what is going to happen then, if I'll be able to keep up my blog, or if I'll even get to go birding. I'm bringing the binocs just in case, but I've heard so many different stories about peoples' experiences through the program I'm going on, I have no idea what to expect anymore.

We'll see what happens though! I'll definitely try to keep posting and give you the scoop on the birds of London whenever I can.

So until the next adventure,

Happy birding!

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2 Comments:

  • Andrea,

    Great photos. It's nice to think about sunny FL on a snowy day! Sounds like you're about to study abroad for a few months?? You'll love it I'm sure. I spent a semester in Australia a few years ago...will never forget it. Totally amazing. Have fun!

    By Blogger Nick Bonomo, At January 28, 2010 at 8:51 PM  

  • Sounds like an awesome end to a short semester! Now on to the next one! You're going to have soo much fun!! I shall be sitting here in the snowy, frigid north awaiting your reports! lol Remember what I told you! ;)

    Oh yea, and in all the excitement, don't forget the toothbrush...... ;) jk

    By Blogger Chris W, At January 30, 2010 at 2:35 AM  

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