ML148490671
Contributor
Date
Location
- Age
- Not specified
- Sex
- Not specified
Observation details
The first thing that hit me was that white cheek stripe. Everything else was more or less a blur from there... Gracie and I were walking the boardwalk back to the car, not a whole lot of bird activity going on. I remember a wren or catbird first getting my attention in the direction of the Quail-dove. Then I caught a glimpse of movement behind the initial bird and put my binoculars on the second bird. Adrenaline surged as I focused on the inferior eye stripe of a very chunky Columbid meandering through the understory. I shouted, "Holy shit! It's a Key West Quail-Dove!!!" With trembling hands I tried to photograph the bird as it was making its way away from us. I was too much of a wreck to focus on trying to track the bird and reset the camera settings for the dark understory. Thankfully Gracie was there; she had her bins on it the whole time, tracking the movements of the fleeting bird. I finally pushed the ISO all the way up to capture the fuzzy shots here. I do recall the bird vocalizing at least twice with the long, low, descending "whhooooo" after the initial visual finding. After that, it vanished--never to be seen again. First county record of this species, being also the furthest north record ever. Found the bird at 11:16 this morning on the west side of G.F. Althouse Trail, between Yaupon Holly and Tuberous Sword Fern interpretation signs. I entered the trail from Division Avenue.
Technical information
- Model
- NIKON D5100
- Lens
- 55.0-200.0 mm f/4.0-5.6
- ISO
- 6400
- Focal length
- 200 mm
- Flash
- Flash did not fire
- f-stop
- f/5.6
- Shutter speed
- 1/80 sec
- Dimensions
- 2079 pixels x 1377 pixels
- Original file size
- 959.71 KB