Lake of the Ozarks Recreation Area

A Chaplaincy anniversary celebration picnic took me to the Lake of the Ozarks today. I, of course, brought along my new camera. I had the best luck finding butterflies.



This Eastern Tailed-Blue confused me with it's apparently dark wing-tip. This was a one-shot-and-gone butterfly, so all I had to work with was this picture and my field guide as I sat on the couch tonight.



Common Buckeyes were, well, common. I began to notice a trend, namely, they seem to like rather, shall we say nasty, stuff to hang out on. Like fish heads...



or Canada Goose exhaust....



Here's one in a more benign setting.





This one really threw me. Took me quite a while to get over its wing markings and focus on it's odd front-end. American Snout, indeed.



An ever-beautiful Eastern Tiger Swallowtail.



Barn Swallows resting on a small helipad.



And finally, a crow that was perched in a dead tree by the boat ramp.

New Camera!

After looking and thinking for a long time, I finally bit the bullet and ordered a Canon Powershot SX20IS. So far, I am very impressed. Just took it out back and took some snapshots to see what it could do.



This thing can zoom. (20x optical!)



The exposure isn't perfect on this next one, but I'm hopeful with what it can reach out and grab.



I'm looking forward to more posting on here now that I've got a new shooting platform!

Catching Up

On the trip from South Carolina to Missouri, I went by way of Ohio and visited my parents. We spent an afternoon at some local preserves looking at birds and butterflies. Here's what I found.


Cabbage White


Eastern Comma


Hackberry Emperor

Damn

Part of my life involves moving. It has benefits, namely it gets me to new and different habitats to see new and different birds and such.

This last move had a bad downside. The movers lost a box. Just one. Box 136-Green.

Box 136 had almost all of my bird books in it. It had 3 binders in it. One was service-related records (which fortunately had all been scanned a few months previous) and 2 full of bird records that had not.

Now, I still have my life-list in digits. But I lost a bunch of trip reports and other bits of written data pertinent to my birding over the last 20 years.

Books are now arriving from Buteo Books and Amazon.com. The check came in the mail. Still, I'll never have the second edition National Geographic Guide that was well-worn that I bought that first spring of birding at Bosque Del Apache NWR. A few titles were so out of print they could not be found.

I picked up a few titles I'd been wanting. Birding on Borrowed Time being one of them. Started reading it today and am enchanted with Phoebe's record keeping she's describing.

It all makes me think again of my records, and how to keep them.

My life list is an Excel spreadsheet. Fairly portable and compatible. But it's getting big enough that it is less so. Having lost hard-copy records reinforces the idea of remote backups as well.

The good news, on a less introspective scale, I think, maybe, I've defeated the Carpenter Ants who had been ravaging my hummingbird feeder.

First Time

We recently took a quick trip to Florida, which, of course, included some time spent at Fort DeSoto County Park. I enjoyed my time watching waders, of course. Unfortunately, there was a fresh southwesterly breeze so any trans-gulf migrants were pushing farther inland or hiding in lower branches to stay out of the breeze.



Saw this interesting combination of trees near the entrance to Arrowhead Picnic Area.



My daughter took a few pictures of me birding.

After the kids tired of the beach, I took them back to Grandpa and Grandma's and made my way to E.G. Simmons County Park. More shorebirds.



Willets were in number everywhere.

Finally, I had my first. Not a new bird, per se, but a new birding experience. I saw a Gray Flycatcher. I had previously seen them in the Bahamas in 2005. This was a first for my US list, though. Therefore, it was the first bird to be a "country bird" in the US without being a lifer.

As I was pondering all of this back at my in-laws, a Swallow-tailed Kite flew over their backyard, eventually there were 6 of them circling about in the evening sky. These were lifers.