Unusual Animal Crackers

I think it’s fun to visit different ethnic grocery shops and find new foods (when we travel we always make time for a neighborhood supermarket, where we might spend hours looking at everything). Last year at a Chinese grocery shop in Rotterdam we picked up a few things, including this box of animal crackers. Is that a happy box, or what?

box of animal crackers

I’m used to crackers shaped like big game like elephants, hippos or tigers. My favorites from this box were the pigeon (tasted like animal cracker), eagle (same) and penguin (same). Have you ever seen a porcupine animal cracker? How about a Tapir, or a dog? And isn’t that tiger kind of adorable-shaped?

unusual animal crackers

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Chattering Shrike

I haven’t been out birding much lately, but I hope that will change in the coming weeks. In the meantime I’ve been reflecting on the past year’s birding. I thought about the Loggerhead Shrikes we saw when we first arrived at Viera Wetlands on a visit in November. A pair was hanging out at the entrance and seemed to welcome us. Later, during the same visit, this shrike gave me a giggle when I watched it chattering from its treetop perch.

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Smoky Mountain Robin

Driving home from Florida last month, we took a detour through Great Smoky Mountains NP to avoid a 150-mile detour caused by a rock slide blocking the highway. We might have been faster than the detour if we hadn’t stopped a couple of times to watch bears foraging close to the road. At a scenic outlook I took this photo of an American Robin. I was trying to take a picture of a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker in this same tree, but it flew off before I could catch it. I didn’t notice the robin right away but he was so kind to patiently pose for me. Our robins are mostly gone for the winter, and I miss them.

Robin

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Two lifers at someone else’s local patch

We checked into our hotel late, after 10+ hours on the road. A stand with tourist brochures beckoned me. I showed Arthur a bird park flyer with a photo of an alligator. When the hotel clerk heard us wondering about the northern boundary range of alligators, she said she saw them all the time. They hung out at one of her favorite spots, a place where she and her girlfriend often walked – a city park not far from the hotel.

The Great Swamp Sanctuary is a 842-acre preserve in Walterboro, South Carolina. We headed there the next morning, before another long day of driving home from Florida.

Great Swamp Sanctuary

From the website: South Carolina’s newest nature-based attraction, the Great Swamp Sanctuary in the City of Walterboro offers visitors the ultimate Lowcountry experience, combining history, culture, recreation and education in a singularly southern lowlands setting. Just three minutes from I-95, this environmental jewel is ideally positioned to serve as the gateway to other nature-based centers in the state and as a catalyst for the lucrative ecotourism market.

The park was quiet on the morning we arrived. Light was bad but the walk was not. First, we didn’t see many birds. But there was more to see.

Great Swamp Trail

Life on a tree trunk

Great Swamp Santuary

Great Swamp Trail

One of the paths ended alongside the swamp. There the sanctuary really came to life. Woodpeckers, warblers, wrens, herons. We spent an hour there, standing, looking, marveling. We heard a familiar-sounding call but never saw the bird scolding chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee – our lifer Carolina Chickadee.

Great Swamp Trail

Pileated Woodpecker

Great Blue Heron

It was getting late, and we were at the far end of the small park. We headed back to the car, walking as hurried travelers, not as birders. The huge spider web we had carefully ducked under on the way out was forgotten until we had passed it again – without incident. A large bird flew across the path ahead of us and we were back to birder mode. Arthur found it after a beat and there it was, our lifer Barred Owl.

Barred Owl

Barred Owl

Barred Owl

We shouldn’t have been surprised, since there’s a photo of a Barred Owl on the sign at the entrance (scroll up), but we were. Surprised and thrilled. We hit the road again after watching the owl for a bit. Never got to see a South Carolina alligator, but that was fine with us.

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My Visitors came from *where* in November?!

Here are some of the more interesting search terms that brought visitors to this site during November. You can see previous editions of this monthly post here.

As usual, there were a few cringe-worthy typos or misspellings that made me chuckle: sawet owls; squrrile feeders; anartica bird; […] forest in illinoise; cominly found birds of illinois; and ny pidgeons t-shirts.

And the regular collection of funny or unusual product searches were present too: t-shirt there real & there magnificent (not really a birder shirt idea!); owl thong; duck boxers and birder boxers. Actually already gotcha covered on those last ones.

There were a few “magnificent” searches, like high magnificient binocular; magnificent mealworms; and great magnificent frigatebird difference. There were a few “frigate bird” searches last month, too: where can i buy a stuffed frigate bird (oh noes! hope they mean a toy!); advantage for frigate bird; and turkey vulture or frigate bird? (that’s easy).

Questions of the month: are vultures aggressive to humans? (dead ones, I suppose?); should chickadees and wrens houses be multilevel; and can birds interbreed.

My favorite search of the month was the bird that was always right, which really has me curious. I am not sure what the searcher had in mind. They landed on The Bird is Right.

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Random Merritt Island NWR & Canaveral NS

After watching the launch of STS-129, we left KSC and followed traffic back towards Titusville. Instead of going to our hotel, we headed to Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge to have a quick spin around Black Point Wildlife Drive. It was getting close to sunset so we mostly kept moving, knowing we would be back the next day for a longer, slower visit.

Sunset

We spent the entire next day at Merritt Island. Again we started on with Black Point Wildlife Drive, this time taking it easy.

After this Killdeer took a bath, it ran to the shore for some serious preening action.

Killdeer

American White Pelicans

I was cracking up watching these busybody American Avocets foraging in the shallow water.

American Avocets

Wildlife Observation Hide

Frog

We visited Canaveral National Seashore too. On the way in, an Osprey ambassador reminded us to park in designated areas only.

Canaveral National Seashore sign

Osprey

From one of the viewing turnouts we could see launchpads 39A and 39B. 39B is closer to us, on the left side of the photo, surrounded by three towers. It is now undergoing modifications to accommodate launching the new Ares 1 rockets. STS-129 launched from 39A (right side of photo) as will all of the remaining five Space Shuttle missions.

Launch Pads

We had a nice long walk on the beach, enjoying the lovely late afternoon weather and the birds foraging and posing in the surf.

Willet

Turnstone

RoyalTerns1

An informational sign told us: “Often mistakenly referred to in general as “sandpipers,” shorebirds include many species that delightfully challenge birdwatchers.” (emphasis mine, ha ha ha)

Shorebirds

It was getting late but we couldn’t resist another go around Black Point Wildlife Drive. On our way there, we were treated to a great sighting of a pair of River Otters crossing the road. We were very excited to see this life mammal but unfortunately did not get a photo. Our second Black Point sunset was predictably beautiful.

Sunset

We finished the day with 55 (bird) species and three lifers including Florida Scrub-Jay which we were thrilled to finally see.

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BPW: Red-shouldered Hawk

Here’s another Viera bird. During our first visit we heard a juvenile Red-shouldered Hawk calling, over and over. The next day I watched an adult polishing off a meal on a post at the back of the wetlands.

RSHA

RSHA

RSHA

More photos of this bird at my Flickr stream here.

When the meal was done, the bird joined another RSHA in a tree further from the road.

RSHA

Later we saw this RSHA perched over the wetlands.

RSHA

RSHA

RSHATree1

More photos of this bird at my Flickr stream here.

Red-shouldered Hawks range where we live but I have never seen one around here before. With so many of the birds at Viera and in Florida in general, you can get such good looks. The birds seem so much more relaxed and approachable. It was great to see these hawks at the wetlands. This was not a lifer but among our best looks at this bird (besides a couple of other times – in FL of course!).

This post has been submitted to Bird Photography Weekly, hosted by Birdfreak. I love BPW because not only can I see great bird photos, but I can read the cool reactions people have to them. There might be a bird I would consider common that is a lifer for the poster. Yet other posts will be of birds that would be a lifer for me, taken in someone’s back yard. Then there are the familiar but far-away European birds that make me feel homesick for Holland. It’s always a great mix. Check out this week’s submissions. While you’re at it, why don’t you submit your own BPW post?

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Random Viera Wetlands

Can you tell I like Viera Wetlands? We visited twice last week and it was great, much better than our previous visit mosquito-wise too. What a relief, we could drive with the windows down and not get eaten alive. We had 48 species over the two visits, including our lifer American Bittern (in flight, no photo unfortunately). Here are some other Viera highlights from 15 and 18 November.

ATTENTION

Viera Wetlands

White Ibis

Northern Shoveler

Tricolored Heron

Hooded Merganser

Blue-winged Teal

Bald Eagle flying

Viera Wetlands

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Two days at NASA

Today Space Shuttle Atlantis landed safely at Kennedy Space Center after an 11-day mission to the ISS. Here are a few photos I took back on Sunday, 15 November and again on Monday, 16 November when we spent most of each day at KSC and viewed the launch.

There’s more to see on the grounds besides the technological wonders.

Gator

BlackVulture

Turtles

Palm Tree

At the observation gantry, the grackle-racket was impossible to ignore.

Gantry Grackles

Gantry Grackle

Gantry Grackles

Atlantis was also hard to ignore. This was taken about 30 hours before launch.

Gantry4

While waiting to board the bus at the Apollo-Saturn V Center I spotted this Osprey.

Osprey

Sign

Monday morning we arrived at KSC bright and early. Cloud cover looked bad but the signage was promising.

Launch!

The skies clear up just in time. Our scope was great for viewing the launch. Photos below were taken right before lift-off and shortly after.

Scope

SecondsBefore

Seconds After

No photos of the launch itself; I was watching it. I could never take any photos or video as fine as what NASA makes publicly available, anyway.

It was awesome to watch the launch. So glad we didn’t go bust, honey!

NoBust

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