Aging Royals

 I don't think I'd ever seen fresh juvie Royal Terns before, so I enjoyed seeing them in VA.

I don't think I've ever seen a large tern with a yellow bill.  The finely patterned scaps of young terns are always cool to see too.

I'm guessing this next bird is a slightly older juvie.

Which could make this bird with a couple darkish retained tail feathers and a bit heavier secondary bar than most of the adults maybe a one year old?

The adults seemed to enjoy flying around carrying fish

I rarely saw them transfer the fish to another bird, so whether they were just enjoying showing off to the neighbors, whether they were looking for mates/offspring that were just elsewhere or doing something else I don't know, but it was fun to watch them eventually attract a screaming mass of other birds that never quite caught up...

Finally a Caspian that flew by.  The Royals had much higher pitched voices and when this bird flew past calling I was disappointed since I couldn't tell it apart from a Caspian ... but it was a Caspian fortunately

Pelicans eat too!

 Brown Pelicans have to be one of the flagship birds of the Atlantic coast.  Sibley seems to imply it takes 3 years for them to reach maturity.  It'd be interesting to really study the age classes.

I've seen them plunge dive from heights before, but there were also some other feeding modes.  At one point a flock was jumping up, bouncing along the water, and then skiving in to the shallow water from a lower angle.

Of course there were some birds plunge diving a lot farther out.

A couple last flyby portraits

Found one!

 I spent much of June searching for Blue Grosbeak and a couple days ago I found one!

Now if the foliage makes you wonder where I found that bird you'd be right.  Because the one I found technically was in Virginia.

Ah well.  We visited in-laws in Virginia Beach.  These birds were singing away in the evening after a storm ran through.  I could heard 3 birds at one time at one point.

Given that they're still singing where they breed I suppose there's still hope that a person could run into one around here where they presumably wouldn't have a mate, but I've given up for the year here.

One last look at the chestnut wingbars...

Shiawassee Stork

Someone found a Wood Stork at Shiawassee NWR yesterday afternoon and as it happens I had today off!  As this bird rarely gets west of the Appalachians, and I don't think has every been chaseable in Michigan Mike and I went up to see it.  

As all good chase subjects should be, it was right where it had been described yesterday with a line of about a dozen cars and maybe 25 birders marking the spot.

It looks like it's just walking in this next pic, but I'd forgotten how much they use their feet to stir up the mud with motions like it was searching for a light switch in the dark.

It's fishing efforts were pretty successful.  It wouldn't really lunge for fish at all, mostly keeping its bill semi-open and mostly submerged in the water.  Now and then it would close the bill and emerge with a fish at the tip.  A couple of tosses later and the fish would disappear.

I'm certain I've never seen as many Great Egrets or White Pelicans in Michigan as were in Shiawassee today. (also never as many wood storks!)

There was one flock of probably 75 pelicans in one place.

Finally a pic of a juvie BC Night-heron.

It could stand to be 100 yards closer with a bit more light, but I was pleased with the sepia tones.

avocets

Big shorebirds tend to show up following fronts and this morning was no different.  With clouds and west winds breaking the muggy heat we weren't terribly surprised to see an avocet land in front of the overlook.  I realized at that point I'd managed to leave the camera in the car, whoops.

I went back for it and about an hour later a flock of avocets appeared.

It was a mix of adults of both sexes (the males have straighter bills), just starting to get some wintry gray in their crowns.

 I don't know of a better visual representation of the whoof-whoof-whoof sound that a falcon's wings make when they bank close to you on a still day than the black and white secondary patterns of the avocets.

Finally a little yellow butterfly that caught my eye as the group departed. 

I looked it up, turns out it's called Little Yellow.  Go figure.

Up the canopy tower

During the late winter and early spring South America posts I covered the first half of our trip to the Ecuadorian Amazon, first at Shiripuno, a small lodge along a small river.  We then went to Sani, a lodge set back in the lagoons off a huge river.  Sani had a canopy tower, and it was there that we spent our first morning at Sani.

Walking around on the floor of the jungle is pretty dark and you know there's a huge amount of leaves and branches where birds can hide.  So it was pretty amazing to get up to them.  A Great Potoo was roosting in the tree as it turned out.

 It spent the entire morning there, though its eyes got shut more and more as the light rose.

Nothing like being eye-level with a couple Double-toothed Kites!

 We spied a pair of Pied Puffbirds (and enjoyed saying that 3 times fast) far out while scanning, but eventually they turned up in our tree as well.

As did a Rufous Attila.  It's Bright-rumped cousin is widely distributed in the tropics, but this was my first new Attila after Bright-rumped

Canopy birds and canopy birds.  We looked down on Spangled Cotingas

 and up at a Turquoise Tanager (one of my best spots of the trip)

This morning was one of the more memorable ones of the trip, and I'll have more photos from the tower as I get back in the groove of editing them.

One view of the forest floor view of the catwalk up to the platform...

Neo-willets

I've gone out a few times to photograph the first comet (Neowise) that has a visible tail in recent memory.  This was at Tiscornia this morning.

A good sized storm front passed through about 36 hours ago.  I missed a flock of about 50 willets the evening it went through, and then a small flock of marbled godwits yesterday morning due to work, but there was at least one straggler willet this morning

Sanderlings are just starting to filter through.  Today was the first day with multiple.  One is still in pretty solid breeding plumage.