Two New Birds!! Weee!!!

I currently have mixed feelings. The eBird report from a particular person and location had several birds that I've never seen before so I went out to the spot. It was fairly quiet. Mostly a bunch of Turkey Vultures. But I did find two new birds.

The first was the Canyon Wren. Two of them were hoping of the rocks that make up the dam for Lake Georgetown. But they were tiny and kept hoping around so I had a really hard time finding them in my camera or binoculars. With patience, I finally got a few pictures. I had no idea what they were but I strongly suspected that it was a new bird.

Then, while walking back to the car, I scared up three or four more birds. These were Vesper Sparrows. Again... I can't tell all of the sparrows apart and even Google and eBird disagree but the Vesper Sparrow has a white eye ring while the Savannah Sparrow had a yellow eye brow. Thus, this is a Vesper Sparrow. Weee!!!

Adding streets to Open Street Maps

As Monty Python is likely to say, "And now for something completely different."

An area that I go to for birding is adding new streets and has also extended a footpath. While I was out walking the footpath I discovered that Open Street Maps (OSM) had part of the footpath but not the new part. What is Open Street Maps you ask!?!?!? Well... it is a crowd source map of the entire world. It is capable of representing most anything and everything so it has footpaths, streets, businesses, houses, plots of land, etc.

So, a few days ago, I got a GPS track and learned how to fix the footpath in OSM using the GPS track to help me. Yea for me!!

But a few mournings ago, I had a "brilliant" idea!!! I could use my drone to take aerial images of where the new streets were and use that to help me add the new streets. Why!?!?!? Because I'm bored I suppose.

Well... it turns out that doing this is way more complicated than I had imagined. Along the way, I discovered other Open Maps such as Open Aerial Map and Open Drone Map.

Open Drone Map has software that will crunch the 48 images I took with my drone, piece them together and add metadata tags to scale, rotate, and precisely place the images so that mapping software can use it. Then upload the resulting image to Open Aerial Maps which then provides an interface back to Open Street Maps with the existing part of the map with the new image added in. It is then a matter of drawing the new features into OSM. Kinda fun...

Here is the view I had just as I finished editiing showing the Open Street Map data and the image that the Open Drone Map created.

No Bald Eagles but an American Kestrel

The last eBird list of sightings mentioned a confirmed Bald Eagle nest somewhere around Lake Granger which is about an hour's east of me but still in Williamson county. I've been out that way before. It is kind of a long ways to truck but it seemed fun. I didn't see any Bald Eagles at all -- which is a slight surprise. But what I did find were American Kestrels. They seemed to be very skittish and I could barely start to approach before they flew. I saw at least two and then a third which might have been the same as the second. I saw a few others birds on the trip. The better images are below. I hope you enjoy them.

An Osprey, Great Egret and Snowy Egrets, and an Eastern Phoebe Confrontation!

I went out to Georgetown's San Gabriel Park but actually on the far eastern side close to Katy Crossing Trail Park. As soon as I got out of the car, there was an Osprey asking where had I been all day!!!! Another pair of Red-shoulder Hawks but not sitting together. And there were Egrets of two different sizes. Do you know how to tell the difference aside from just size? The Great Egret has a yellow bill and black legs while the Snowy Egret has the opposite: black bill and yellow feet. The end of the outing I watched Eastern Phoebe's catching insects and fighting over who got the favorite perch.

I hope you enjoy the images and short video

A Pair of Red-shoulder Hawks!

I got out finally after the ice storm Fern and went to Old Settler's pond. There were the usual assortment of ducks and egrets. I some Red-winged Blackbirds which is slightly unusual. Three White-winged Doves sitting in a tree (they looked cold). But the big adventure was a pair of Red-shouldered Hawks! Weee!!!! 😀

I hope you enjoy the images.

And I didn't fall on my ass ONCE!!!!

Winter Storm Fern came to town. I woke to 20º and sleet on the ground. I got my drone out and flew a quick lap and then spent the rest of the day trying to figure out a new tool for videos: DaVinci Resolve. It is a relatively simple video but I hope you find it relaxing.

Looking for birds before the big winter storm hits...

There is a winter storm coming. I didn't know this but now they name winter storms. The one coming is "Winter Storm Fern". Gosh...

Anyhow, I thought the cold weather might be pushing birds, ducks in particular, down south. Lake Devine in Leander had a lot of ducks a few weeks ago but the last time I was there, it wasn't mostly empty. I wanted to go check it out today to see how populated it was. I figure there were about 400 ducks there.

But as I looked at the ducks, I kept noticing other birds. Birds which were odd in Williamson county.

The images is one of each of the species I identified today: fifteen of them. The Ring-necked Duck is the frontmost duck in that image. The other ducks in the image are Redheads and American Wigons. The Wilson's Snipe is my first.

I hope you enjoy the images.