Chautauqua Lake Sunset
So, I can’t let Scott have all the fun shooting beautiful sunsets and felt that Chautauqua Lake was in need of some representation on the web. With that said, as soon as I got home from the office last night I grabbed my camera and ran to the water’s edge to capture this off of Bemus Point. With all the ice still on the lake, despite the warm temperatures we have had as of late, the withering sunlight was aglow across the frozen body of water. As the ice has sealed off food resources for many waterfowl, it has left the lake rather quiet and barren. However, taking in the...
Read MoreHistoric Blizzard of 2016
Here we are again – another year, another crippling blizzard crushing the Northeast. This century has been extremely volatile weather-wise for much of the east coast, and the winter seasons alone have been historic in some way nearly every year. We thought for a while that El Niño would keep it a more routine sort of winter, but once it showed it would be the strongest El Niño of all time there were a lot of unknowns…especially after historic warmth had its hold on us through the end of 2015. Basking in the 70s for Christmas, it was nevertheless certain that a cold air mass would...
Read MoreNorthern Flicker
Here is the species that started everything for Roger Tory Peterson – the Northern Flicker. It and all birds came to represent to Roger all the freedom, beauty and vitality of the natural world. This Northern Flicker is a male as you can see by the black mustache. The bird is feeding on the ground, as many flickers do, searching for ants, beetles and other insect life. This winter is a good example of how a warmer than usual stretch of weather can impact a certain species as these strongly migratory birds might not have to fly so far to find uncovered, unfrozen earth. Climate change...
Read MoreJanuary Great Egret
This is your typical January Great Egret (Ardea alba) in New England…right…wait, what? As we plan and prepare for the fifth season of the Audubon Alliance for Coastal Waterbirds, part of our year-round effort is NOT finding these long-legged waders during the avian wintering season in Connecticut. I photographed this bird yesterday, and today the temperature climbed to 60 with severe thunderstorms in the area. Thanks again, El Niño, and you as well, climate change. We will have a chilly week in the Northeast, and the Lake Erie snow machine will turn on dumping inches or maybe...
Read MoreWide Open Lake Erie
Thanks to El Niño’s strong influence on the position of the Pacific jet stream, the start of the 2015-2016 winter started more green than white here in Western New York. With only short spurts of cold air, Lake Erie has been staying warm and fueling small snow storms as systems move through. As the storms pass, we have been keeping an eye out for bird movement, as it has been pretty quiet up to this point. A couple weeks ago, JCC/RTPI intern Alex Shipherd and I took a trip to various points along the Lake Erie Plain to scope out waterfowl and winter raptors. As you can see Lake Erie is still...
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