Bay Photos by Donna

My post title truly says it!

Ruby-throated Hummingbird (male)

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Five months have past since my last post, I apologize!  I’ve had an amazing summer filled with good excuses. 😉  Birding, gardening, boating, fishing, crabbing, and lots of visits & adventures with the grandboys, leaving me little time and energy for blogging.

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Chesapeake Bay Bridge

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My buddies eager to chauffeur Grammy around whenever and wherever I wanted to go!

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Our Ruby-throated Hummingbirds are on the migration move.  All of mine have left except one, and I know it’s any day.  What entertainers!  We will surely miss them.  I even achieved success with holding their feeder outstretched, and they would land and feed.  What a special treat! 😍

(click on photos to enlarge for better detail)

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I gained another five bird lifers💃this summer, one being discovered shortly after taking the above bridge photo a few weeks ago.

Perched on two channel marker buoys and flying around was an exciting rare seabird species, the Brown Booby. These beauties are usually found in tropical oceans around the world. There were a total of 14!

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Brown Booby (adult)

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I found another lifer also off-course in its coastal migration, the Hudsonian Godwit.

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Hudsonian Godwit

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And yet another off course, the small Black Tern.

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Black Terns

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Two more lifers seen but not photographed were the Western Sandpiper and Barred Owl.  Next time, I gotta got those photos!

My beloved Osprey are migrating now as well, our local residents are all but gone and transients from the north are passing through.

It was not a good summer for our Chesapeake Bay Osprey.

Research findings just released a few days ago stated the following, “Ospreys nesting at multiple sites around the Chesapeake Bay this year failed to produce enough young to sustain their numbers, new data shows.  The scientists collecting the data say many chicks apparently starved in areas where the birds subsist mainly on Atlantic menhaden for food.”

The disheartening full article is here.

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Just too many bird favorites, how about a pretty collage….
(click to enlarge)

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Another one of my favorite birds sittin’ pretty, the Northern Cardinal.

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Northern Cardinal (male)

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A summer day’s beautiful ending….

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The migrating warblers are next!

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