Morning flight photography

First off, at 6:58 this morning, Tom Johnson reported a male Lawrence's Warbler (recessive hybrid of Blue-winged and Golden-winged warblers) at the dike at Higbees Beach SWA.

Second, since I was up anyway, I decided to check out the skies over my Villas house to see if the promising weather with a light WNW breeze at my house would produce any migrants partaking in northbound morning flight. I thought I'd also put the new camera body through its paces relative to focusing on wee little birds that weren't close. I watched for an hour from official sunrise (6:16), tallying 4 Snowy Egrets, 1 Green Heron, 2 Yellow Warblers, 1 Prairie Warbler, 2 American Redstarts, 7 unidentified warblers, and 1 American Goldfinch; not bad for 19 August. Below are some of the pix that I took in these low-light conditions. I have to say that I'm quite happy with how the new camera body performed. I also look forward to seeing Tom's totals from the dike for the morning, which is still going on for him, of course! Me, I've got to get back to that online 40-hr HAZWOPER course. Wanna trade, Tom?

In chronological order: Green Heron @ 6:29,

Eastern Kingbird @ 6:36,

American Redstart @ 6:46,


Snowy Egrets @ 7:00,

and Prairie Warbler @ 7:16.