Category: birds

Peregrine Falcons 2022 Season – Part 2

birds, Nesting Birds of Missouri, Peregrine Falcons - 2022 Nesting Season, wildlife, wildlife photography

Unfortunately, we didn’t have an opportunity to get back to the nest site until late May. When we returned, we found the parents were busy raising four already good-sized chicks. The photography was challenging. We had to contend with the too-speedy traffic of the river road that lied between us and the bluff face where the nest was located and the heat distortion that this blacktop created. There is also the issue of trying to photograph the fastest vertebrate on the planet.

Most often mom would take responsibility of feeding the chicks directly. Dad was primarily the hunter and would drop off prey. Here dad takes some time to piece the prey and feed it to the hungry chicks.
Dad brings a Baltimore Oriole (future Peregrine Falcon) back to the nest.
As typically done, dad would bring the prey back to a spot along the bluff and call for mom. Here mom has just picked up the Oriole and will take the bird to a new spot for processing.
Mom removes feathers from the prey bird on a bluff platform away from the nest site.
Mom begins feeding the impatient chicks.
I suppose at a point of diminishing returns, mom would often take the remains of the carcass away from the nest and would pick the remains to feed herself.
Mom soaring with remains of Oriole.
The female’s favorite perch was this dead cedar that provided great looks at the nest and everything above. The parents would sometimes put up with Turkey Vultures soaring near the nest, but would chase away any Red-tailed Hawks or Bald Eagles. They especially hate eagles getting too close to the nest.
Mom has spotted some large bird that has strayed to close to the nest and is about to give them the business.

Peregrine Falcons 2022 Season – Part 1

birds, Nesting Birds of Missouri, Peregrine Falcons - 2022 Nesting Season, wildlife, wildlife photography

Miguel and I spent a few hours in the spring and early summer of 2022 photographing a pair of Peregrine Falcons in Madison County, IL during their nesting season. In this first post, the photos were taken in March. There were likely no eggs in the nest at this point and the pair was bonding by the male bringing in food for the female and the two soaring the skies of their territory. It wound up being a pretty dramatic nesting season. Lots more pics to follow.

The male adult Peregrine Falcon sporting identification bands he received while he was in the nest.
The female Peregrine Falcon was not banded.
The male brings a freshly caught Meadowlark, making obvious vocalizations to make his intentions known.
The female picks up the prey and flies to another perch to feast on the nuptial gift.

Lesser Scaup Hen – May 2022

birds, Photography from the boat, wildlife, wildlife photography

Photos taken of a Lesser Scaup hen taken from my canoe in Ellis Bay at Riverlands Migratory Bird Sanctuary in May, 2022. Due to the large area of white on the face and the lack of white wing bars in the primary flight feathers, I feel reasonably confident in calling this bird a Lesser Scaup, but please let me know if you have evidence to suggest otherwise.

Female Lesser Scaup
The white wing bars stopping at the primaries suggests this is a Lesser Scaup hen.

2022 – Year of the Limpkin!

birds, wildlife, wildlife photography
A visitor from the south, this Limpkin was found in early September, 2022, at the lake of the Japanese Gardens at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, MO.

Prior to 2022, the Limpkin, a bird with a normal range from Florida to the north to northern Argentina to the south, had never before been recorded in the state of Missouri. This year there have been at least 10 birds recorded in the state so far, the latest finally coming from the good part of the state! 😉 The bird featured here was found in early September by Cathy Spahn at the Japanese Garden of the Missouri Botanical Garden in downtown St. Louis City. This was extraordinary timing as the annual Japanese festival at MOBOT was going on at the time. This meant large crowds of people. Several of us arrived early on the morning of the 5th and found the bird quickly, giving us great looks and not seeming to mind the presence of people at all.

Here the Limpkin can be seen in the context of the Japanese Garden, with visitors on the zig-zag bridge, or Yatsuhashi, across the water.

The Limpkin looks like a heron in appearance, but is actually the only extant member of its own family, the Aramidae, and is actually considered most closely related to the rails. It is also unique in feeding primarily on apple snails but will feed on other types of snails, freshwater mussels and clams and small aquatic arthropods like crayfish as it forages through its preferred habitat of brushy swamps and marshes.

The crooked overlap at the tip of its bill is not an abnormality. This aids the Limpkin in removing snails, their preferred food, from their shells.

This influx of Limpkins into the Show Me State wasn’t exactly a surprise. Limpkin reports outside of Florida began around 2015, with records being found in Georgia, and other southeastern states over the following years. Birders have been waiting for them to show up in Missouri for a few years and now they finally have. The reasons for their northward spread are uncertain but are likely due to the spread of an exotic island apple snail originally from tropical and subtropical South America.

The Limpkin foraging among the lotus at the lake of the Japanese Garden.

I had thought about chasing Limpkins previously seen in the state in 2022 but couldn’t get myself talked into the roughly 600 mile round trip drive this would have taken. I’m so glad I saved the gas! This was quite the experience and I’ll be interested in seeing how long this bird stays in St. Louis. Here are a few more photos of this fantastic bird.

2022 Kansas Trip – Lesser Prairie Chickens

Bird Species of Conservation Concern, birds, wildlife, wildlife photography

With this crazy summer, full of a time-consuming work project and trying to keep establishing plants alive in the yard, there has been very little time for birding trips. Casey organized this trip from mid April of 2022 and it was definitely memorable. I still have hundreds of photos to process, but here are a few from our first stop, a couple of Lesser Prairie Chicken Leks in western Kansas.