I love living in Vermont.  Our birds aren’t as exotic as the Southwestern Species, and we don’t commonly get the coastal excitement that they do over in NH and MA, but we get birds that are adaptable to the cold.  Fall in Vermont is especially interesting because we get boreal birds passing through as well as some occasional surprises.  One surprise happened to me just the other day in the form of this Barred Owl

                               

I didn’t photograph it for long, but apparently it’s been hanging out in this one spot, not far from my house (I could walk there without too much hassle), for months.  

Below the fold, I’ll share some of our other local Fall birds, as well as a fairly major surprise/life bird.

These are all smaller versions– the large sized versions are linked.

In a few weeks, I’ll be doing a trip to New Mexico, which is the only place I’ve ever taken a plane to see birds.  We hadn’t planned to go back to Bosque Del Apache this year, but the sweetie got called to work in NM for a week, so I’m joining her partway through; will bird while she works and then we’ll head over to Bosque for two days and stay there for the weekend before heading home.  We see American Coots here and there in New England.  The first I ever saw was on a wet and not particularly useful birding day at Parker River Wildlife Refuge and it carries a special place for me because I was relatively new to birding and managed to ID it without help from other birders, so I kind of love seeing coots, even if they are fairly unexciting to a lot of other birders.   In Bosque, however, they are everywhere.  Funny thing, though.  Right after we learned about the whole New Mexico thing, I saw this bird pop up in our local marsh:

                               

I take that as a sign.

On of our most common birds in Vermont, year round, is the Black Capped Chickadee:

                               

Strange factoid about these adorable little birds: not only do their calls vary dramatically depending on time of year, the part of their brain that remembers their spring calls shuts down temporarily in the winter.  They don’t just not use their Spring calls in Winter.  They’re physiologically incapable of doing so.

Blue Jays are generally considered a bit of a pest, but they’re still amazing birds to watch.  Being corvids, they tend to be fairly smart.  They, along with our grackles, form a kind of a birder mafia in our yard.  In nesting season, they protect the area from larger predators (crows, primarily), which allow our baltimore orioles and black-and-white warblers to nest with less risk, but will mob the feeders and occasionally (though we’ve never seen this happen in our yard) predate on smaller birds:

                               

Fox Sparrows are very much migratory for us– I’ve never heard of one sticking around, but we get them occasionally in the Fall.  This year, two hung out at our feeders for a couple weeks, but I haven’t seen them in the last week.  This photo was taken in late October, at nearby Herrick’s Cove

                               

The Hairy Woodpecker is another year-long resident here.  I include this photo just because I love the look of it:

                               

Northern Cardinals also hang around year-round here.  Older birders have told me that this used to be too far North for Cardinals, but in the last 30 years, their population has slowly increased to the point where they are commonplace.  I’m not sure if that’s due to warming or an increase in the number of people feeding birds and providing them with usable seed.  I suspect it’s a combination of both.

                               

A couple years ago, Pine Siskins invaded.  By “invaded” I mean that we had hundreds in our yard.  Literally, you could walk through the yard and think there’s a bunch of thistle under the feeders and suddenly the whole scene would explode with birds flying everywhere– not thistle– just birds with black wings all over the place.  This year, we appear to have three, which I appreciate better than 200

                               

The Red Bellied Woodpecker was a challenge bird for me– I’d seen one in Northern Vermont but failed to photograph it, but it was a horrible look, and it took me a few years to finally photograph one.  In the last year, however, I’ve had multiple unexpected sightings of them, managed to get some decent photos and now actually have one actively making a daily trip to our feeders:

                               

Song Sparrows are also year-round for us.  I don’t have much to say about them, but I love this photo.  Any time I can get a very common bird in an unusual pose, it makes me happy:

                               

                        The Tufted Titmouse is another bird that, like the cardinal, never used to be seen in Vermont.  Now they breed here:

                               

I was very excited the first time I ever saw a White Crowned Sparrow.  They’re not rare here, but they’re not common either.  In Bosque, I expect to see them everywhere.

                               

The White Breasted Nuthatch is another year-round bird for us.  They nest in our yard as well.  The babies are kind of adorable, but that’s to be expected, since the adults are as well:

                               

Perhaps the most exciting bird for me this fall was the Townsends Warbler that appeared in Westmoreland, NH, a few weeks back: an e-mail went out to the NH-bird group and suddenly there were birders everywhere..  I had thought I was done with warbler season, but apparently it wasn’t quite done with me.  Not only did this bird stick around for a few weeks, but I managed to get this photo without anyone’s help finding the damned thing.

                               

It’s been a strange fall for me– I’ve been dealing with a rotator cuff injury, so photography has been trickier– holding an 8lb camera isn’t as easy with significant pain in the shoulder, but it’s improved dramatically through PT combined with not being a moron.  

There’s an unrelated project I’ve been working on: this animation is 45 minutes of time compressed into 30 seconds:

It’s a practice run for a project I want to do in December, creating an animation of a series of shots that start in daylight and move into darkness, with the exposure time changing accordingly so that as it gets darker, everything takes longer to expose, creating some very odd timing effects in the overall effect.  The December project, if done properly, should involve people as well as other objects, which could make it a lot of fun.  I may also try it in a more populated area, such as Boston when I visit there next month.

I’m going take a moment to do the personal plug thing– I have, as I do every year, a birding calendar available.  Every year, I go through my photos and find, for each month, one of my favorite photos of a bird that was be found (usually in New England) in that month.  There’s an embed of the calendar here:

I also have a series of note cards that I’ve created.  If anyone’s interested in purchasing these for the holidays, they’re at Chickadee Cards.

What’s everyone else doing this Season?  How are the birds where you are?