Mansz and McKerral

Deer Island Birds with the SJNC

Jim Wilson led a number of us from the Saint John Naturalists Club to Deer Island this past Saturday; David and I went along and had a very enjoyable day of warm weather (18C!) and interesting birds. Here are a few pictures, including Bohemian Waxwings at a crab-apple tree, a late and exceptional White-eyed Vireo, a winter-plumaged Black Guillemot, and some heavily cropped, heat-shimery images of the Greenland race (flavirostris) Greater White-fronted Goose that has been present on a farm near St. Andrews. A Little Gull rounded out the superlative list of birds seen, although I wasn't able to get any good pictures of it.

A summary posted to the NatureNB Listserv is available here: https://listserv.unb.ca/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1011B&L=NATURENB&T=0&F=&S=&P=39409.

Posted November 15, 2010 by Paul Mansz

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Pink-footed Goose in New Brunswick

My son, David, and I made a hurried trip out to the Cormierville area today to see the Province’s first Pink-footed Goose. Many thanks to the local property owners there who allowed us access to the shore where we could get a few pictures, and of course to Stu Tingley for finding it in the first place!

Posted October 31, 2010 by Paul Mansz

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Pattie's birthday fireworks

Actually, I just wanted to see how the Posterous auto-post to Facebook works with this set of pictures. They were taken down at Rothesay Common on Aug 4 -- Pattie's birthday (amazing the lengths I go to for her :-). We were joined by Jas and David, and by my cousin Bob and his wife Jan visiting from ON. The images were also uploaded full-res -- am curious how the auto-post will handle this.

Posted October 5, 2010 by Paul Mansz

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Brazil and Florida - La Sagra's Flycatcher

Peter Wilshaw and I spent two days stopped over in Miami on our way to Brazil, and spent one full day birding with Larry Manfredi as our guide (http://southfloridabirding.com/).

We had a number of lifer’s on our day with Larry, including this rare La Sagra’s Flycatcher at Bill Baggs State Park on Key Biscayne. We spent quite some time in the area looking for the bird before Larry’s spectacular hearing picked up its call and we were able to race over to see it. This is an occasional vagrant to south Florida, normally resident in Cuba, the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands.

This was my first day with the big glass and new tripod in the field and it was a learning experience – although I’m happy enough with the pictures I need to focus on getting settings and composition nailed quickly!

Updates to the site galleries to follow...