Tag Archives: Leaf-Cutter Ants

Murmurs from the Unattached

Posted on by
4

As promised, here are a few photos previously unattached to any posts, although I seriously suspect that other versions appear in various earlier posts. I just found these worth repeating as I am now finding them again.

The bird at the top of the post is a Townsend’s Solitaire I saw it in New Mexico in 2012.

For all the Ruby-crowned Kinglets I have photographed without their ruby crowns, I felt it was worth sharing this one. This one from April 22, 2014 taken at Lake Shore East Park, which I used to frequent when I worked downtown in Chicago.

Then I took too many photos on October 16, 2014, of a Harris’s Sparrow that was in Lurie Garden.

I had a Kentucky Warbler in 2014, also likely at Lake Shore East Park.

I couldn’t resist adding this American Crow shot. I spent years hanging out with the Crows on my lunch hour.

This rainbow was somewhere in Central or South America on February 26, 2015. The bird is a Magnificent Frigatebird.

Then there was a Townsend’s Solitaire in Millennium Park on April 28, 2016.

And on June 26, 2016, I saw a Yellow-headed Blackbird at the Gooselake Natural Area when the water levels were better.

And last for now, a little video of some Leaf Cutter Ants from one of my tropical trips.

By publishing this post, these items are no longer “unattached.” I have many more such items to go through, which will likely inspire another post sometime in the not-too-distant future. If nothing else, I am now curious to find the original photos sometime wherever they reside on external hard drives. They might be worth looking at while I enter my old trip lists into eBird. It never ends…

Texas Day One

Posted on by
6
Western Kingbird

We were warming up in Chicago, finally, it seemed, and then last night with the rain the temperatures dropped and now we are cold, windy and rainy again. So even though Spring Migration will continue to distract me when I am capable of paying attention to it, I want to revisit memories of the southwest Texas trip before they become too distant. Here’s a brief recap of one stop on our first travel day.

Driving to Del Rio from the San Antonio airport for our first night, we pulled off the road at a rest stop and found it to be quite birdy. It also became the comparison stop for tyrannus flycatchers. In addition to the Western Kingbird at the top of this post, we had Couch’s Kingbirds and Scissor-Tailed Flycatchers. This was a perfect introduction because we would continue to run into these birds again and again. The Couch’s was a new one for me. Sorry he’s got his back to us, I’ll see if anything turns up later a bit more representative of the whole bird.

Couch’s Kingbird
Scissor-tailed Flycatcher

Also at that stop was my first look at a Bullock’s Oriole.

Bullock’s Oriole

In addition to the birds, we encountered Leaf-Cutter Ants which are some of my favorite creatures.

I expected to see plenty of Great-tailed Grackles but there’s always the first one…

A few more of the Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher. Better pictures will follow. They were consistently the most cooperative, photogenic birds of the trip.

Reluctantly I keep trying to face the present… The high for today in Chicago is 49 degrees Fahrenheit, which is where we are now, raining with thunderstorms possible. My phone app predicts tomorrow’s high will be 83 and cloudy. What to wear?

One more Western Kingbird… I have so many photos and not much time this weekend but my goal is to move on to the pictures from the next day in Texas. As my attention to warbler-and-others migration keeps getting interrupted…

A Rainy Introduction

Posted on by
4

Rain at Sacha 7-3-2016-3902

Gray-Capped Flycatcher

What better way to experience the rainforest than to have a downpour? As I sit here in Chicago cooling off from the outside heat and we have no rain in our immediate forecast, maybe I can channel enough rain thoughts from the Amazon to send the clouds our way.

I am still trying to get caught up with a reality that seems to shape-shift daily, making the photo processing project one of fits and starts at best. But one must find a way to cope.

The first day we stragglers joined the rest of our group was for the latter part of the day, and it must have been rainy for the most part because that is all my pictures seem to reflect. There was a short hike and a boat ride. The only form of transportation to and from the lodge is by canoe.

You can see the clouds building in the photo above. At some point we passed a Cayman in the water.

Cayman 7-3-2016-3781

Coming or going, I’m not sure. But the little video below these pictures is of one of my favorite tropics occurrences – that of a procession of leaf-cutter ants busy at work through a gap in the boardwalk.

Not many bird pictures taken that day, but there were a few, like the very wet Hoatzin below.

Wet Hoatzin 7-3-2016-3879

And a Striated Heron.

Yellow-Crowned Night Heron 7-3-2016-3937

Wet flycatchers, like the Boat-Billed Flycatcher on the left and the Gray-Capped Flycatcher on the right.

The late afternoon produced the downpour which is documented in one of several videos below.

There was always a Blue-and-White Swallow or two perched on the railing around the fenced-off “swimming pool” in the Napo River, accessible from the daytime dining area.

Blue-and-White Swallow 7-3-2016-3847

Blue-and-White Swallow

It’s hard to leave even a rainy day in the Amazon but I will have to continue this later.

Yellow-Crowned Night Heron 7-3-2016-3940