St. Marks Birds

One of the challenges for me on this trip has been trying to keep up with the culling, identifying and tagging of the birds I have been photographing. Over the three days at St. Marks, I took about 15,000 photographs. At this point, I have deleted about 98% of them, leaving about 300 from the three days. This photo is of a Common Yellowthroat, one of 15 new species I added to my 2025 list while visiting St. Marks.

Most of the new species that I added were shore birds. This American Avocet was one of 5 new life birds for me from St. Marks. One of the challenges at St. Marks is that it is often difficult to get close to the birds. I am sure that this bird was at least 200 yards away. Without my camera or binoculars, it was simply a small white blob on the water.

Here is that same picture before I cropped it. This full size photo is already about a 12x magnification level compared to my eyesight just from the lens I was using. By comparison, my binoculars are 8x magnification. It turns out that getting the focus sharp on a bird that far away is difficult, even with all of the advances in modern camera technology. In addition to wanting to get the focus sharp, I want the bird’s curved beak to be clearly visible and for the bird to be in profile but facing slightly towards me. This is one of the reasons that I end up with so many photos. Since I have my camera set up to take 20 frames every second, even a very short burst tends to be 4 or 5 frames.

I knew immediately that the American Avocet was a new bird for me because it is so visually distinctive. On the other hand, this Long-Billed Dowitcher was also a new life list bird, but I did not know that when I photographed it. Like the Avocet, this was a long distance away. The full image was projected into my tiny view finder, so unless I paused, reviewed the photo, and zoomed in while reviewing it on my camera, it would remain an unidentified distant brown bird with a long beak until I look at the picture on my computer.

Here is a Greater Yellowlegs, another brown bird with a long beak. When on a mud flat and with sunlight hitting them, its bright yellow legs are distinctive. However, when wading in the water, the legs are not especially visible.

This is a Lesser Yellowlegs. When side by side with a Greater Yellowlegs, the Lesser Yellowlegs are noticeably smaller. In isolation where size is difficult to judge, they look remarkably similar. The easiest way to distinguish them is their bills. The Greater Yellowlegs has a slightly longer bill and the bill has a very slight upturn to it. The Lesser Yellowlegs’s bill is slightly shorter and completely straight.

This is a Stilt Sandpiper. Differentiating this from one of the Yellowlegs while in the field and at a great distance is completely beyond me. Consequently, when looking a wide variety of distant wading shorebirds, I try to photograph as many individuals as possible since I do not know what I will discover when I am able to look closely at the pictures. For example, if one looks at the bill on this Stilt Sandpiper, it is actually curved slightly downwards in contrast to the straight bill of the Lesser Yellowlegs and the slightly upturned bill of the Greater Yellowlegs. While not as obvious in this photo, the legs have a slightly more greenish hue compared to the brighter yellow color of the Yellowlegs. The white eyebrow of the Stilt Sandpiper is one of the easier differences to see but maybe less obvious on some individual birds. I am sure that when I took this photo, I was expecting it to be another Greater or Lesser Yellowlegs.

This is an American Golden Plover, another new life bird for me, and a rarity for St. Marks. It ls another similarly sized, brown, wading bird. It also looks similar to the Black Plover which is more common here. One of the major differences is the golden color in the back. Because it is a highly unusual sighting, when posting the sighting on e-bird, I needed to provide additional documentation to verify my sighting. One advantage of being a photographer is that I essentially always have a reasonable photo I can upload for identification verification. As it happens, I have not yet seen the somewhat more common Black Plover; however, I will almost certainly see it in Chatham this summer if I do not see one later on this trip.

This Swallow-Tailed Kite is also a new life bird for me. I felt very lucky to get this shot. I was bicycling towards the exit of the refuge. I still had my big camera out. I had the lens resting wedged between my aero-bars and right brake hood while the strap was under my left arm and over my right shoulder. This allows me to securely carry it while biking. I only do this when I am biking relatively slowly and expecting to be photographing birds such as when I am biking within the refuge. Carrying my camera this way means that I can start taking photographs within a few seconds of seeing a bird rather than the roughly 2 minutes it takes to get the camera out from my cycling bag. I saw this bird and immediately recognized it as a Swallow-Tailed Kite and knew it would be a life bird for me. I immediately stopped the bike, raised the camera, and caught about a 1 second burst before the bird disappeared behind the trees. This was the last frame of that burst.

Here are a pair of Cedar Waxwings which are another addition to my 2025 list. In the summertime, I will see these in Massachusetts.

This is a Greater Scaup. I generally find them in Massachusetts during the winter months. I was happy to photograph a Lesser Scaup when in New Mexico earlier this year since they are much less common in Massachusetts. However, because I had Covid twice in February, I did not get out that often in Massachusetts. When I did get out, I did not manage to see a Greater Scaup. I saw more Lesser Scaups in Hawaii and have seen them here as well. I was thinking that I would might need to wait until December to see a Greater Scaup which is when they come back to Massachusetts for the winter. However, mixed in with some Redheads I saw this single Greater Scaup.

Here are some of the Redheads that the Greater Scaup was swimming with. I first photographed a Redhead on my trip to New Mexico in January. Redhead was the 12th new species I added to my life list this year. At this point, I have added 67 new species to my life list this year. So far in 2025, I have seen 259 of the 825 species that have been recorded in the US this year. I am hoping that I will somehow manage to get to 300 by the end of this trip, but I think 280 or 285 is much more likely.