Category Archives: Bird Photography Weekly

Here’s another Viera bird. During our first visit we heard a juvenile Red-shouldered Hawk calling, over and over. The next day I watched an adult polishing off a meal on a post at the back of the wetlands.

More photos of this bird at my Flickr stream here.

When the meal was done, the bird joined another RSHA in a tree further from the road.

Later we saw this RSHA perched over the wetlands.

More photos of this bird at my Flickr stream here.

Red-shouldered Hawks range where we live but I have never seen one around here before. With so many of the birds at Viera and in Florida in general, you can get such good looks. The birds seem so much more relaxed and approachable. It was great to see these hawks at the wetlands. This was not a lifer but among our best looks at this bird (besides a couple of other times – in FL of course!).

This post has been submitted to Bird Photography Weekly, hosted by Birdfreak. I love BPW because not only can I see great bird photos, but I can read the cool reactions people have to them. There might be a bird I would consider common that is a lifer for the poster. Yet other posts will be of birds that would be a lifer for me, taken in someone’s back yard. Then there are the familiar but far-away European birds that make me feel homesick for Holland. It’s always a great mix. Check out this week’s submissions. While you’re at it, why don’t you submit your own BPW post?

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We returned home late on Friday from an 8-day road trip down to Florida to see the Space Shuttle Atlantis lift off for the ISS. The launch was scheduled for Monday, November 16th and, unlike last time we tried to view a launch, there were no delays and the Shuttle took off right on time.

Of course we couldn’t pass up the chance to do a bit of birding along the way. While staying on the Space Coast we visited Viera Wetlands twice and spent a day at Merritt Island NWR (which remained closed during our last Florida visit, when the Shuttle was delayed, and delayed, and delayed…). We took our time driving home and stopped at Great Swamp Sanctuary in South Carolina and even drove through Great Smoky Mountains NP.

To start off what will probably be a handful of blog entries about our trip, here’s my Bird Photography Weekly submission for this week. American Coots summer up here in Illinois, but we rarely get to see them up close. At Viera, they were tooling around in large rafts all over.

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Bird Photography Weekly is a regular collection of user-submitted bird photos from all over the world. The new edition comes out every Sunday. Go have a look at this week’s submissions!

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We’ve been back from Florida since Friday and I’m getting ready to publish a few posts about the bit of birding we go in while on the road. This Green Heron was one of my favorite sightings. We get them up here in Northern Illinois, but they are so shy here we almost only catch them when they fly over – like they’re in a hurry to get out of view. This one we saw at Viera Wetlands was strutting around like a rock star (and kind of looking like one, too).

Stay tuned for more Florida posts here in the coming days and be sure to visit the other great submissions for this week’s Bird Photography Weekly.

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