Well I escaped the country last week just before the airports closed due to snow! I’m in Bosque del Apache in New Mexico for a couple of weeks, photographing Sandhill Cranes, Snow Geese and Ross’s Geese. This huge refuge is a photographer’s paradise most days, but yesterday when a Golden Eagle took one of the thousands, a blizzard of Snow Geese swept over the road like a tsunami and I just stood in awe at the power and sound of the collective wings! Then I remembered to try and capture it all on camera. Until I get home and process the images, here are a few of today’s Sandhills....
I created this blur of Coots as they ran after some bread on the ice. London was mild at the weekend and I was already missing the cold weather... but it is forecast to return.
Following three major influxes/invasions of Bohemian Waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus) in Ayrshire in the last decade (2000/01, 2004, and 2008/09), a further influx is underway. As previously (see here), this post will be updated regularly with reports. A full report of the autumn-winter period records will be published in the Ayrshire Bird Report 2010. Please email me with additional sightings of Waxwings for the blog and bird report at recorder@ayrshire-birding.org.uk or by adding a comment below. Thanks to the following for records: Gordon McCall, Angus Hogg, Mike Howes, Brian Orr, Jim Johnstone, J Anthony, Kevin Beck, Tony & Gerda Scott, Robert Kelly, Mark Medcalf, Vallerie Firminger, Jim Thomson, Gordon & Stella Nixon, Frances Brown, Derek Hall, Ian & Monica Clark, Jason McManus, Charlie McGill, Alison McKellar, Dave Grant, Kirsty McEwing, Dick Vernon, Ayrshire Birding Yahoo Group, Birdline Scotland, BirdGuides.
Waxwing, photographed in 2008 on the disused railway line at Bonnyton, Kilmarnock.