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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

What did you see in your binoculars today? (2 Viewers)

Yeeeehaw!! That moment of the year :) I think it is because of these moments that we watch birds.

Over here I've been intrigued by an unknown (to me :-O) little passerine that "has been appearing" on my binoculars for the last few days, it is a tiny bird that makes a little tweet each time it flaps its wings on its undulating flight, and today I solved the mystery: a Zitting cisticola! Happy as a hippo :)

:) Nice. In fact I think that's what your juv Stonechat photo seems to be :t:
 
:) Nice. In fact I think that's what your juv Stonechat photo seems to be :t:

A-ha!!!!!! Now that you mention it... it was exactly the same spot a few days before. However, I don't recall the tweet and the undulating flight, so I didn't think both birds were one and the same. Anyway, the image is actually pretty accurate and telling of the habitat and habits of the zitting cisticola. Nice catch, obrigado!!

Today, another "first" of the season: the first pied flycatcher of the year. This is a nice one, since according to SEO/Birdlife it is absent from the Balearic islands and prefers altitudes above 1000 m... maybe this one just wants to chill out by the beach B :) Jokes aside; I recall watching it two years ago, but not last year. So I don't know if this one is a migrating bird bound to northward bound.
 
A-ha!!!!!! Now that you mention it... it was exactly the same spot a few days before. However, I don't recall the tweet and the undulating flight, so I didn't think both birds were one and the same. Anyway, the image is actually pretty accurate and telling of the habitat and habits of the zitting cisticola. Nice catch, obrigado!!

You're very welcome! Good birding! :t:
 
Forty martins, I feel like summer is almost here, but what were they?

Managed to count at least forty, but too distant to tell whether sand or house, though no swallows or swifts mixed in. Couldn't even see them with the naked eye and was looking at herring gulls when I noticed them far distant with my 10x.

Landscape there has four small bodies of water and farmland, north west of where the A127 meets the A130 in Essex.
 
This morning I saw a European Goldfinch! Really spectacular bird and also my first. And yesterday I watched a dozen Whimbrel fly into Madrona Marsh. I'd never seen even a single Whimbrel there in the past.

Isn't migration wonderful?

Alan
 
Today, a first: red-rumped swallow! Flying amid a cloud of house martins, at first I couldn't believe my eyes, but there it was, flying over the reeds on a (surprisingly urban) wetland.
I had brought the 12x40 with me (instead of bringing the 8x and the scope), but I could follow it in flight since the reeds where some 100 - 200 m away. What a great bold smile you get when you see a bird you've only seen in the beautiful drawings of your field guide :)
 
Caught some sand Martin’s on the ground collecting nest material with the bin bins, great to see them in detail when not zipping about so fast!

Peter
 
On holiday in the west of Scotland and very unfit but we managed to hike/stagger to a remote bay and on the way were entertained by several winter-visitor Redwings sharing the area with spring arrivals Sand Martins and Wheatears.

None of this prepared us for the group (more like a crowd) of at least 12 Great Northern Divers (Common Loons). They made occasional soft calls but didn't break into that haunting wavering song. Fantastic sight.

Lee
 
One of the most relaxing and fascinating activities of the season has to be just standing with your binoculars on your face and pass the time following the endless swinging movements of swallows and swifts. The moment you just lose one after nearly a minute of observation, you pick another one that happens to cross your field of view. I could be doing this for hours and hours with a smile on my face. Yesterday at dusk I was just doing this following a flock of common swallows, swifts and house martins, when a sand martin crossed my field of view. Oh, what a delight to follow it in flight, trying to remember, in pure awe, its name, since it's been a while since I saw the last one.

A little bird naming trivia:
In Spain we call the sand martin avión zapador, which translates to something like digger or trencher. Martins get the common name avión, which is the same word we use for airplane, but a term that goes back centuries to well before the French coined the name avion in French, quite recently in historical terms. So, coincidentally, we use the same word for airplane and house martin: avión, which puzzles many non-birders when they learn there is a little bird called avión, airplane, and always ask how did we call the bird before the airplane was invented ;)
 
A crow trying to kill a Garter snake. The snake won this round. Would have never caught it without the binoculars. I was spellbound as it was quit the tussle.

Dereck
 
Evening walk beside a meadow toward the lake... atop a spruce on the far side an American Kestrel, with head tucked down somewhat and body feathers fluffed up roughly, perhaps drying from the afternoon rain. High in a pine near me a Red-Tailed Hawk.

Both were still there on my way back after about 20 minutes. The hawk was definitely alert, looking out into the meadow, head held forward and occasionally shifting a bit from side to side. Perhaps I should have waited longer. A couple of minutes later the hawk flew straight over me from behind with a vole, and came to rest on a convenient horizontal limb high in a tree ahead, vole still in one claw, and began to eat. I thought I was the only observer. Then I noticed a Stellar's Jay near me (had also seen a pair of Blue Jays near the lake, it's nice to have both around here) and watched it fly from one tree to another away from me, until it was across the road up in the tree next to the hawk's, and then further up again, about 15-20 feet each time, finally over in the same tree, then same bino FOV (UVHD+ 10x32), and when it started to move even closer the hawk rose and flew off to finish dinner elsewhere.
 
Hooded Crow (Central France) sitting in a Lebanese Cedar tree.

It's interesting how once you start looking a lot of the fauna and flora in semi-urban areas is non-native.

Edmund
 
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It's interesting how once you start looking a lot of the fauna and flora in semi-urban areas is non-native.
It often worked more the other way around in a place like the USA -- rather than flourishes of the exotic, a massive effort to introduce familiar species to a new place. Even birds: someone decided we should have every one mentioned in Shakespeare, and brought them over. Several proliferated, and now we too have starlings, house sparrows etc.
 
So today in central Paris I saw a (black) crow - actually two of them, walking on the tin roof of a 7 floor building, surrounded by some very complicated chimneys. I was drawing the chimneys with the binos and suddenly the birds intruded into my view :)


Edmund
 
So today in central Paris I saw a (black) crow - actually two of them, walking on the tin roof of a 7 floor building, surrounded by some very complicated chimneys. I was drawing the chimneys with the binos and suddenly the birds intruded into my view :)


Edmund

Bonjour Edmund: if painting historic old buildings with high towers and steeples, it is always worth giving them a careful look over with the binoculars!

Regards
Patudo
 

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