HAPPY NEW YEAR

[Shortsighted]

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
The dawning of a new year offers a Tabula rasa for the amateur naturalist.
All the photographic misses and the unsuccessful searches for a previously reported sighting, all the those adventurous mishaps that threatened life and limb, all the regrettable incidence of questionable behavior in the field mediated by torrential excitement and those few unfortunate encounters with John Cleese’s current obsession can now be forgiven and forgotten as we begin a new year with a clean slate.
In keeping with Locke’s theme of Tabula Rasa I present a photo that comes to mind at this transition, a photo that I call “Snow Worms”, but also serves as a metaphor for a blank slate. Please ignore the snow worms in the distance, those wrinkles are just more tweeting by Trump as the year careens into being.
May your first sighting of the year be a special one, and please, don’t keep it to yourself

[Dinusaur]

Happy New Year to you too Shortsighted.
A great metaphor for Tabula Rasa indeed. A Snowy Owl in this snowy landscape would be nice to paint this clean slate with. However, I did slightly better on this first day of the year, added another life bird to my list. This morning a fried of mine and I went to Whirlpool area in Niagara in search of a Black-legged Kittiwake. After an hour of search, akin to finding a needle in the haystack, I finally managed to spot the juvenile - once spotted it was easy to track as it was very different from many Bonaparte's and other gulls around when looked from above. For comparison I've added a photo of one of hundreds of Bonaparte's Gull that the Kittiwake was mixing with.

1. Black-legged Kittiwake



2. Bonaparte's Gull - notice the absence of black 'M' patter on its wings and no black band at the end of the tail.