Tag Archives: Great Blue Heron Abaco

GILPIN POINT, ABACO: A ‘2 HOURS, 40 SPECIES’ BIRDING HOTSPOT

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Black-necked Stilt, Abaco (Alex Hughes) copy

GILPIN POINT, ABACO: A ‘2 HOURS, 40 SPECIES’ BIRDING HOTSPOT

Got  a spare couple of hours? Reluctant to go birding on the bird-reliable yet ambience-lite town dumps, where careful cropping will be needed to avoid including post-apocalyptic scenery in your hard-won photos of a Little Mulligatawny Owl? Then read on. I have mentioned Gilpin Point before as a great place for birding, and listed many of the species to be found there. It benefits from a large pond, a pristine shoreline, and a coppice environment with some pine forest thrown in. All the makings of an excellent birding location, with suitable habitat for a wide variety of species. Blue-winged Teal, Abaco (Keith Salvesen)

On November 21st Reg Patterson, well-known Abaco birder and guide, was up early, and by 07.00 he was at Gilpin Pond where  he spent a couple of hours . He recorded 40 species in that time, from very large to very small. His checklist reveals a great cross-section of the birdlife to be found on Abaco. There might easily have been parrots there too, since Gilpin has become one of their daily chattering spots for a frank exchange of news and views. Sadly it seems that the beautiful and (now) rare SPOONBILL recorded there in early October has moved on.

Willet, Abaco

Here is Reg’s checklist, which I have illustrated with a variety of photos of the species he found, all taken on Abaco and many actually taken at Gilpin Point. There are plenty of other species that might easily have been seen there then – or perhaps later in the day (e.g. snowy egret, yellowlegs, kestrel, turkey vulture, red-legged thrush, cuban emerald, not to mention shorebirds and seabirds if some time was spent on the shore).

CHECKLIST

Blue-winged Teal (16) (see above)

White-cheeked Pintail (20)

White-cheeked Pintail, Abaco 1 (Keith Salvesen)

Green-winged Teal (1)

Great Blue Heron (1)Great_Blue_Heron_Wading_2

Great Egret (1)

Little Blue Heron (2) 

Tricolored Heron (2)

Green Heron (2)Green Heron, Gilpin Point, Abaco (Keith Salvesen)05

Yellow-crowned Night-Heron (1)

Turkey Vulture (7)

Common Gallinule (1)

Black-necked Stilt (1) (and header)

Black-necked Stilt, Gilpin Point, Abaco (Keith Salvesen)

Spotted Sandpiper (1)

Willett (1) (see above)

Common Ground-Dove (1)

Smooth-billed Ani (8)

Bahama Woodstar (1)Bahama Woodstar (m), Abaco (Bruce Hallett)

Belted Kingfisher (1)

West Indian Woodpecker (7)

Hairy Woodpecker (1)Hairy Woodpecker, Abaco (Tony Hepburn)

Peregrine Falcon (1)

Loggerhead Kingbird (4)Loggerhead Kingbird, Abaco - Tom Reed

Thick-billed Vireo (7)

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher (1)Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Abaco, Bahamas (Keith Salvesen)

Red-legged Thrush (1)

Gray Catbird (4)

Northern Mockingbird (2)Northern Mockingbird, Abaco (Keith Salvesen)

Ovenbird (1)

Northern Waterthrush (6)

Bahama Yellowthroat (1)

Bahama Yellowthroat, Abaco (Charles Skinner)

Common Yellowthroat (1)

Cape May Warbler (3)

Black-throated Blue Warbler (1)Black-throated Blue Warbler (m), Abaco (Bruce Hallett)

Palm Warbler (2)

Prairie Warbler (2)

 Bananaquit (1)Bananaquit & palm, Delphi, Abaco, Bahamas (Keith Salvesen)

 Black-faced Grassquit (6)

 Greater Antillean Bullfinch (4)

 Western Spindalis (7)

 Red-winged Blackbird (X)Red-winged Blackbird Abaco Bahamas (Keith Salvesen)

Gilpin Map 1 Gilpin Map 2 Gilpin Map 3

Credits: Alex Hughes (1 / header); Keith Salvesen (2, 4, 6, 7, 11, 12, 15 , 16); TBC (3, 5); Bruce Hallett (8, 14); Tony Hepburn (9); Tom Reed (10); Charles Skinner (13)

 

STANDIN’ ON THE DOCK OF THE BAY: GREAT BLUE HERON ON ABACO

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Great Blue Heron, Sandy Point, Abaco - Keith Salvesen 2

STANDIN’ ON THE DOCK OF THE BAY: GREAT BLUE HERON ON ABACO

The occasion: a trip to Sandy Point for a lunch party at the legendary Nancy’s in honour of  Sandy Walker at the end of his 5 years as manager of the Delphi Club. A pair of brown pelicans on the nearby dock were clumsily flying around, diving, perching, drying their feathers, then repeating the cycle. In a quiet moment I slipped away to watch them – and a Great Blue Heron landed quite close by me. So as well as taking photos of the pelicans, I pointed the camera at the heron from time to time. My favourite view is of it standing proudly on the edge of the dock, with the truly azure sea behind it (header and final image).

Great Blue Heron, Sandy Point, Abaco - Keith Salvesen 6

THE PERILS OF A CAMERA UPGRADE

[PHOTOGRAPHIC INTERLUDE – SKIP IF EASILY BORED BY SUCH THINGS]

I don’t have a fancy camera. I would never get the settings right before the bird had flown. Or died, even. So I had been using a Panasonic Lumix FZ45 kindly given to me by Mrs RH in a benign moment, possibly Christmas. Then I made a classic error of upgrading to an FZ72 with an alleged massive 60X zoom. Brilliant, I thought. Big mistake. My old camera has a Leica lens. Used with care and a lens extension (zeugma score!), it is / I am occasionally capable of taking pin-sharp photos. The upgrade camera’s lens turned out not to be a Leica. Almost all the shots I took were ‘soft’, the more so using the zoom. A soft photo taken with a less good lens, zoomed 60X, will never be a better photo. Just an even softer one. I wish I’d had Old Faithful with me instead. When we got home, I immediately dug out OF and sold 60X disappointment. OF is now reinstated as my BF.  

The shots of this heron mostly turned out fairly well, largely because it stayed quite close to me. It flew off a couple of times, then returned to the edge of the dock. Here are a few close-up views of the heron selected from the various pics I took, showing some of the details of this fine bird. Great Blue Heron, Sandy Point, Abaco - Keith Salvesen 3 Great Blue Heron, Sandy Point, Abaco - Keith Salvesen 4 Great Blue Heron, Sandy Point, Abaco - Keith Salvesen 5Great Blue Heron, Sandy Point, Abaco - Keith Salvesen 7Great Blue Heron, Sandy Point, Abaco - Keith Salvesen 10 Then I remembered why I was meant to be at Sandy Point, and went back to Nancy’s for conch fritters and a Kalik or two well OK make that three… Great Blue Heron, Sandy Point, Abaco - Keith Salvesen 11

ROLLING HARBOUR MUSICAL DIGRESSION

Otis Redding recorded ‘Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay’, arguably his greatest moment, in 1967 a matter of days before he died in a plane crash. The record became the first ever posthumous US Chart #1 (#3 in UK). I’ve dug out a video compo by the excellent Rhino outfit that disinters or at least recycles gems from our musical heritage. It’s not just the voice of Otis Redding that makes this song so poignant and so good – Steve Cropper’s guitar is outstanding too.

Guitarists out there – you want a ‘Chase Chart’, don’t you?

Ch_6_Fig_114http://www.howmusicreallyworks.com

A rare photo of Sandy (centre back row, sunnies on cap) smilingSandy at Sandy Point

Photo Credits: RH, er… that it…

A GREAT BLUE HERON AT SANDY POINT, ABACO

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When I get a better internet connection I have some great bird posts planned. Until then it has to be single images on my iph@ne. Here’s one from a couple of days back … NEW! Originally mis-ID – there was some general confusion about that. Thanks, Brigitte on Tilloo for ringing the alarm bell. My bad! Internet has temporarily improved, here’s the full-size rather than iph@ne image, with more to follow soon…Great Blue Heron Close-up, Sandy Point Abaco

“EGRETS? I’VE SEEN A FEW, BUT THEN AGAIN…” GREAT EGRETS ON ABACO

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Artist BRIGITTE BOWYER CAREY of Tilloo Cay naturally has a keen eye for a photograph. I was very taken with her images of egrets posted on her Facebook page, and she has kindly said I can encourage a migration to Rolling Harbour. So here they are. The first photo is my favourite, the very epitome of elegance and grace.

To the amateur (me) there is plenty of scope for confusion between the great egret and the great blue heron (white phase) – unless you can see the bird’s legs. The great egret’s are dark; the GBH’s are yellow. There are probably plenty of other distinctions that are completely obvious to a practised birder, but I think the legs are the easiest answer for the untutored enthusiast. 

                                 And where, I hear no one ask, are RH’s own stunning egret photos? A quick check reveals that the one taken from a skiff last year perched on a black mangrove out on the Marls is really a distant white speck, as is his cousin pootling around way out on a far shoreline; and the one up a tree at Sandy Point – a small white blur of what could easily be fur. I’ll get another chance next month…

NEW DEC. 2012  A fine egret photo from H J Ruiz from his birding site AVIAN 101 Great Egret

As it happens, a fine CORNELL LAB video of great blue herons returning to their nest has appeared in my inbox, and the fact that I have mentioned them above is a good excuse to include this short nest-cam movie