Random Happenings

So its been a pretty good birding week & a terrible picture taking week.  (on my part) However the sub par shots I did manage to take do tell some pretty good stories.

I caught a Merlin terrorizing a few thousand Starlings near lot 1 in the Reserve. Awesome to watch. The battle ensued for a good 40 mins.

The Starlings would try to take off from the shrub, and the Merlin would try to grab one, forcing them all back down. The Merlin shot threw the flock relentlessly, it was pretty ridiculous to behold.

The Merlin just went through where the flock is condensed. 

Also impossible to get a shot of the little Falcon it was moving so fast, at least with my level of photography skills. Once put up however the Starlings made impressive patterns as the Merlin flanked them.

This fuzzy blur is about what it looked like jetting by me

While looking for owls in the Salisbury "owl thicket" I found hundreds of Monarch Butterfly's roosting for the night. (can butterfly's roost??) Anyways, that was pretty cool. Also lots of Red-breasted Nuthatch's.

& Finally I caught a young Redtail hunting the North Field in the reserve. The bird caught a number of mice & snakes in a very short period, and seemed very pleased with itself. I was a true champion with this one.  I initially mis-identified the raptor & then proceeded to take roughly 300 pictures with auto focus thinking it was manual... getting not one shot in focus. Still a cool hawk. From these shots you can tell its a redtail, but it looked dark as hell on the ground initially damnit. 

Also... a tagged Gull on Sandy Point