Chatham Birding

This is a Yellow-Crowned Night Heron. It was the photo I liked the most from my outing on July 4th near our home in Chatham MA. I have only photographed Yellow-Crowned Night Herons once before, and then I only photographed juveniles which look rather different, so getting a good photo of an adult in flight was terrific. This is especially so since the Yellow-Crowned Night Heron is a rare bird for Cape Cod. Those birders who subscribe to E-Bird’s rare bird alerts for Cape Cod would have gotten an alert from my posting. There were two sightings of a Yellow-Crowned Night Heron mid-cape about a week ago, so it is possible this is the same bird.

For today’s post, I thought that while I would share and identify some of the birds I photographed, I would also focus on the outing itself and the process of photographing, curating, editing, then posting about the birds.

I woke up around 6am on the 4th which was bit later than usual for me. The weather looked nice, so I decided to go out with my camera even though I was about an hour later than ideal. Getting out before sunrise generally allows for the best light for photography. The northern portion of Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge is just a couple of miles from our home in Chatham, so I headed there. To get down to the seashore requires a walk through a wooded area. On the way, I spotted this male Eastern Towhee. With a couple of minutes effort, I was able to capture this image. This was my second favorite shot of the day, since it is the best photograph I have taken of a male Eastern Towhee. How I value a photograph is partially a function of the quality of previous photos I have taken of the species. For a common bird that I have photographed countless times, it takes a significantly more inspiring photo to get me excited compared with a bird for which I have few quality images.

After a short walk, I reached the shoreline where I photographed this Least Sandpiper. To take a photo like this, I get down on the ground with my camera just above the sand to be at eye level with the bird. This is usually a more engaging angle and also shortens and blurs the foreground helping to place the focus on the bird. Reading my blog, one might get the gross misperception that I just go out, spot these images, push the shutter, then upload the photo. On the 4th, I was out for 90 minutes. During that time, I took slightly over 3300 photographs. After culling them yesterday, I was left with just 55 photos. This means that I have already deleted 98.3% of the photos I took on July 4th. Of these, I will probably delete over half in the next wave of culling and even more will be deleted over the next year.

This photo of a Common Tern reminds me of an Olympic Swimmer doing the butterfly. The tern had just dived into the water, unsuccessful in its attempt to capture a tiny fish, it is now working to get airborne again. This photo was likely just one frame of a burst of 10 to 30 photographs. Furthermore, this burst was one of 20 or 30 bursts that I likely took of these Common Terns. It is because of these bursts that my photo count can climb to 3300 in 90 minutes.

These terns were swarming over the shallows. There are 14 in this photo, but many more left, right, and above. The terns have a breeding colony just on the other side of the Stage Harbor outlet perhaps 300 yards away. With the wind coming towards me and slightly from the left, this photo predominantly captures tail feathers as the terns try to hover by flying into the wind. I took quite a number of photos trying to capture the sense of the flock in a visually interesting manner. In many images, there were either birds in the foreground or background that were completely out of focus and distracting. In others, the birds just gave a sense of chaos. In this image, the birds are pointed in similar directions, in a narrow enough plane to all be in focus, and all looking down in a similar place for food. All of these characteristics help make the image work for me. I am sure that I took at least 300 images over the 5 minutes I watched this collection of terns, but essentially all of them ended up being either chaotic messes, or too few birds to give the sense of the flock.

This photo captures a Willet in an unusual wing position. The Willet is hitting the air brakes as it is about to land. When the Willets are on the ground, the distinctive white bars on their wings are not visible. When photographing birds, I like it when there is something distinctive about the image. I also like it when the image highlights some important characteristic of the bird.

Since I had not been out birding here for a couple of months, part of my objective for the morning was taking an inventory of the birds species I saw. Ultimately, I photographed 27 varieties of birds during my 90 minute walk. Because I am less of a birder than a photographer, by bird identification skills are not great. Also, while out, my focus is on taking the photo not identifying the bird. For this reason, I sometimes find surprises when reviewing photos. For example, I had no idea I had photographed the Yellow-Crowned Night Heron while I was out. In that case, I saw a bird flying overhead, so I just popped my camera up, managed to capture a burst, then the bird was gone. My focus was not on bird identification, but on capturing the photo. It was only later that I discovered I had photographed a rare species. At first glance from a distance, the body of this Short-Billed Dowitcher looks quite similar to the many Willets that were near it. It was only when I noticed the bill length as the bird turned sideways in the view finder that I realized that it was a Short-Billed Dowitcher.

This Greater Yellowlegs is another bird that I could easily mistake as one of the numerous Willets when getting a quick glance from a distance. Looking at these photos, the differences are clear; however, these images are taken with a long lens providing over 30 times magnification after cropping. My distance vision is sufficiently poor that it is only looking through the viewfinder of my camera that I could see the yellow legs that trivially differentiate this Greater Yellowlegs from a Willet.

During the morning, I saw both Great Egrets and Snowy Egrets. I do not have any interesting images of the Great Egrets, but I like this one of an immature Snowy Egret as it took off from the beach. As it ages, its legs will turn black but its feet will stay yellow. Its beak will also become black with just a patch of yellow between the eye and beak. This photo was one of a series of about 30 shots starting just before it took off and ending as it flew away. A major challenge of the culling process is taking a series of good images and selecting the one to keep. This takes much more time than simply deciding there are no images worth keeping in a burst.

There are 3 species of gulls that are ubiquitous around Chatham: Herring Gulls, Great Black-Backed Gulls and Laughing Gulls. This is a Laughing Gull, the smallest of the three, and my personal favorite. I have included it for those people who do not live by the Atlantic Ocean or the shores of the Great Lakes and might not be familiar with its distinctive coloring.

In addition to the countless Herring Gulls, Great Black-Backed Gulls and Laughing Gulls, I spotted a pair of juvenile Bonaparte’s Gulls which are somewhat uncommon. As an adult, this bird will look quite similar to the Laughing Gull above except that its beak will be thinner and not have the red coloring somewhat visible on the photo above but generally more visible on other Laughing Gulls.

I will end this post with a photo of a Bank Swallow. Swallows are typically difficult to capture in flight as they are constantly and rapidly changing directions. When I was first starting my bird photography, I remember how excited I was when I finally captured a barn swallow in sharp focus on this same beach in 2020. Now, the combination of much better technique and newer and better gear, means that I have a vastly better success rate.

While taking these photos only took 90 minutes in the field, culling these photos, writing the post, and doing final edits on the photos has taken another 6 hours or more. I hope you enjoy these images and reading about them.