ML125287651

Age and sex

Adult Male - X

Observation details

Adult male, in pine-studded area between parking fields 7 & 8. Originally detected by unsolicited calls (no playback used). Playback elicited more calls in response, but bird was skulky, keeping out of sight. Finally caught a brief glimpse of it bursting out of a small pine and flying away. Tim D. arrived a few minutes later and we teamed up to track it down. We both got brief, obscured looks at it in another pine before it gave us the slip. We pressed on, but were close to giving up when we heard it vocalize again. Tim saw it fly to trees north of the bike path and close to the road. We got decent looks at it perched there, loosely associating with a flock of Goldfinches. It then flew north out of sight, across the marsh to the far treeline. We packed it in at that point. I was back in my car entering checklist notes when Dave LaM rolled up and told me his pal Mike R was on the bird! We hurried over but the bird had just dropped from its perch where it had been teed up for 3 minutes in the same dead pine where Ken T had originally found it in the morning. We hung around and got looks at it slipping through the shadows as it foraged mainly on the ground under some pines - not particularly satisfying. Dave and Mike eventually left, but I stuck around and eventually tracked the bird down again. Ended up with excellent close looks and a few more, much better photos.

Technical information

Model

Canon EOS 7D Mark II

Lens

EF400mm f/5.6L USM

ISO

1250

Focal length

400 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire, auto

f-stop

f/5.6

Shutter speed

1/250 sec

Dimensions

4452 pixels x 3036 pixels

Original file size

3.61 MB