Snowy Owl in New Hampshire pt 2

The BFO's header (above) image is a crop of and image that will give you and idea just how close I was to this beautiful bird. I was just following a Snow Bunting that was working the edge of the rocks for food when I saw something white and said to myself whats that, you can amagin how surprised I was to be about 12 feet away from a Snowy Owl. I clicked off a few images and turn to tell Len Medlock " Snowy Owl" he was behind and took off running to get his camera and tell the other members of our party. I started to back up everytime the owl looked way and started shooting photos again, someone yelled something, I look back and there was the whole group standing there. Steve Mirick said move away slowly or something like that. I lowered my body to get out of site of the owl when someone out for a walk on the rocks spooked the owl( not on porpose) it flew just a little ways and landed on a rock where everyone had great views of the owl for 30 minutes or so. As we were leaveing I saw Steve M helping a little boy with his camera to get a photo of the owl through Steves scope and i'm sure that boy and his mom will never forget that. Nice job Steve!

These are more of the other images that I took of the Snowy Owl last Sunday Nov 2nd while on the Brookline (Mass)Bird Club's trip to the NH sea coast. As it turns out there was another snowy owl found that day at Plum Inland and from the Vt e-bird report by Jane Stein about a snowy owl seen on a hawk watch two days before. Here's a link to that report; http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/VTBD.html#1225581969 . And I found this very interesting report from Ron Pittaway and Jean Iron in Canada dated: November 1, 2008 ontbirds AT hwcn.org Subject: [Ontbirds] Quebec Report - Snowy Owl, Pine Grosbeak, Bohemian Waxwing. Pascal Cote of the Observatoire d'oiseaux de Tadoussac reports the first good movements of Pine Grosbeaks and Bohemian Waxwings on Wednesday when 1200 grosbeaks and 640 waxwings passed the observatory. Common Redpolls are still moving, but less than 2000 per day. Snowy Owl: Lemming numbers are low across the Eastern Arctic. Quebec is experiencing a big flight of Snowy Owls (Quebec's bird) with more and more observations since 25 October.

See http://tinyurl.com/5p795q The observatory publishes "The Migration Chronicle" in French and English.. Click on English at top right of page www.explos-nature.qc.ca/oot Ron Pittaway and Jean Iron Toronto and Minden ON This was a very interesting read given the Snowy Owl sittings this week. We could be in for a good winter of Boral and Arctic birds in our own backyards.

Anyhow how about bird number 300, a Rufous Hummingbird and I had a great day with this great group of birders from all over NE. Look forward to the next time I'm down on the coast of NH.





Thanks for visiting BFO's

Peter Manship

Birding the coast of New Hampshire in November pt 1 of 3

Blue sky, Sunshine and strong winds coming out of the northeast. The temps in the low to mid forties and the boy's and I headed out at 3;oc in the morning to go birding on the coast of New Hampshire with Steve and Jane Mirick. They were leading the Brookline Birding Club and anyone else that wanted to on a birding tour of the NH seacoast. We started out in Seabrook and worked our way north, the group had great looks at many bird thanks to effort of everyone. We got things rolling with a Fox Sparrow and then a White-crowned Sparrow. Moving up the road to Seabrook state park/beach (i don't know which) there was a large flock of Snow Buntings feeding in the park, probably 300 plus . Horned larks flew past, there was Red-throated Loons preening in the harbor channel and I already had three new life birds. And it was only 10 o'clock, It was going to be a great day, little did I know just how good it was going to be. Steve found a Lapland Longspur which was quite difficult to relocate as the flock of Snow Buntings keep spooking. We were looking in the sand dunes for a Ipswich/Savannah type
sparrow, looking around I found a Lapland Longspur feeding in the tall grass on the sand dunes.


We moved on to a place called Bicentennial park in Hampton, here we found some Yellow-rump, Nashville and Black Poll Warblers. And just beyond the park is where the Dickcessel was found by David Johnston of Bratteleboro Vermont. Here is a link to Len Medlock's beautiful image of it :
http://www.pbase.com/lmedlock/image/105403743

This last image is for Art Morris , a soft Blurr of a Ipswick/Savannah sparrow taking flight in the dunes. When it calm down around here I'm going to post a report about my weekend How-To Seminar in Portland, Maine: “The Art of Nature Photography; It Ain’t Just Birds” Weekend with great Arthur Morris, which was just amazing!
Till then make sure to VOTE and I'll start working on part 2 for next post.

Thanks for checking in to BFO's
Peter Manship

Snowy Owl on New Hampshire coast

This post is just to get some of the Snowy Owl photos up for people to see. I will do a report on my birding trip to the coast of NH tomorrow. For now here's a couple of images .
This is life bird #300 a Rufous Hummingbird

Thanks to Steve and Jane for # 300 and to all the other people that made it a great fun day of birding on the coast of NH. Here's a link to Steve's report for the day:

http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NHBD.html#1225666023 enjoy!

Peter Manship