I took vacation this week and spent some time chasing around rare bird sightings. I had great luck, but the pictures didn't come out that great. In most cases, I was a good distance from the subject. The Pink Footed Goose is a rarity for Massachusetts. "They" claim there has only been 3 sightings of the goose during the last decade. I've always wondered how "they" have so much variable expertise in every subject and how so many people know them. Seems like everyone is always quoting them. I digress.
Pink Footed Goose
The Barnacle Goose was taken on Massachusetts Corrections property. I should have known better, but we got the boot from the property. I was still able to get a pretty good shot of the Barnacle Goose before getting the bootsky!
Barnacle Goose
It took me 45 minutes to find the White Fronted in a flock (or is it a gaggle) of Canada Geese. There were easily 100 CG and only one WFG. The sun was also behind the geese too so it made it double trouble. I was elated to finally find it. However, just when I had him in the view finder a customer called me. AUGH! Yes I know I'm on vacation, but customers needs come first always. It took me another 15 minutes to find it again, but I got it.
White-Fronted Goose
Lastly, I stopped to take a picture of a hawk dining on a pigeon. Pretty good pic, but unfortunately I can't tell the species. I'm leaning toward a immature Coop, but it could also be an immature sharpie. The legs were short. Hope you like!
Cooper's Hawk
3 comments:
Booted from the property eh. The officials must be wondering why the deluge of people just for a goose :)
Great finds! Cant help you with the hawk..hope someone can help.
Coopers hawk. The Sharp-shinned has much more of a squat head. That's one way to tell then whilst in air, the sharp-shinned has more of a squat, flat shoulers. The coopers head sticks out much farther from the shoulders.
The other way to tell is the general size. Sharp-shinned are more of a blue jay size, coopers are larger...
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