Hello all, I was planning on visiting a brunch get together and then head to Myers, but I took a wrong turn and that lead another wrong turn (;-)) and reached Myers instead. Here I spent nearly two hours photographing Dunlins feed in a small pool near the parking lot. I moved closer to them very slowly while squatting on the ground. By an hour or so they came so close that I could not focus with my 300 mm lens, a thirty year old model with no auto focus, meaning I have to focus manually so that ismore challenging. They fed just about 5 feet away from me. Talking about focusing, dunlins do move fast and feed at an incredible speed. I used 500 th of a second to shoot the birds, but of 400 + shots most of them had some blur, either head or body.
It was great fun watching their feeding techniques. they fed facing directly down, or put their head sideways to pull the critters out. Most of the time i hardly saw what they ate. Because prey were gone before their head was up. On a few occasions I could say something about half cm wide prey they were feeding on. Also, the plumages of individuals varied so very much, some still showed some breeding colored feathers and others totally drab. There were HY birds too. I wonder what their relationship is to each others. I watched some of them close their eyes or at least narrow their slit when going under water! http://picasaweb.google.com/mharibal/DunlinsAtMyersPointOn101809# As usual watched several Turkey Vultures from my yard and elsewhere. AT the junction of Meadow Street and Rt 13 saw a medium sized falcon with dark underside but was too quick to get a good look. Every autumn this question comes to my mind as to why woolly bear crosses the road. I watched several of them cross the road today, I avoided them when I encountered them but the cars behind me went right over. Why do they need to go to other side of the road? Is the grass greener on the other side? Some of the possible explanations I came up with a) May be they think roads are rocks and they are looking for cracks to hibernate b) they think roads are tree trunks and trying to find some cracks But generally they seem to be heading straight across the road and do not investigate along the road so my hypotheses are wrong. So why do they cross roads? I was seeing if all of them went in the same directions. Many looked like crossing over to south side of the road as I was driving on east west road. But on north south road they seem to go both east and west. Anyone one has any explanation? Cheers Meena Meena Haribal Ithaca NY 14850 webpage: http://meenaharibal.blogspot.com/ http://www.geocities.com/asiootusloe/http://www.geocities.com/asiootusloe/mothsofithaca.htmlhttp://haribal.wikispaces.com/space/showimage/wildwest+trip+August+2007+.pdf Current Loc: 42o 25' 44.48" N, 76o 28' 16.90" W Elev 816 ft or 248.7 m Formerly: 19o 0' 41,65" N, 72o 51' 13.02" E Elev 33 ft or 10m -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES Archives: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
