A few pictures of the King Rail visiting West Park in Zionsville, Indiana.

A summary of my month of December. A single run for some Short-eared Owl photos and a rarity chase for a Red Phalarope.

A Harris's Sparrow hanging out at The Burn makes for a long week of work, but I was able to get out and see it and a few other sparrows.

A Brown Booby shows up in southern Indiana and makes the news. Of course I have to go see it!

3/17/2023 Earlier this week, I finally got out to do some birding. Between work, house stuff, and being stuck with a dead car battery, it has been tough to get out. I finally made it out and decided to chase a rare gull; unfortunately, it was not the Ross's Gull that has been haunting the lakefront with sporadic appearances. Instead, it was the Little Gull that has been present for about a week here in the Indianapolis area. It is hard to complain about a gull of this cali

1/15/2023 The mountain actually called a few days ago, but I was working. In this instance, the mountain is a Mountain Bluebird that was found in northern Indiana. The bird was showing on a rural property with some nice, gentle hills and a meandering creek running through it. You could see where the bird would have been attracted to this area over the miles and miles of barren ag fields that are more common to the area. In cases like this (very remote/rural area that is no

10/30/2022 The big news here in Indiana was that a Fork-tailed Flycatcher showed up here. The bird appeared Thursday morning up in Beverly Shores, at the lakefront. This is a 3 hour drive for me, and I was reluctant to make it. This species rarely stays put for long, here. Sometimes they only stay for a few hours before disappearing. I think one stayed for about 2 days, once. This bird had staying power, though. A long ways from its normal range in South America, this

4/9/2021 - 4/11/2021 Sometimes, it is just weird the way things turn out.... If you are here to look at bird pics, skip ahead. This weekend started out Friday evening. Carmen and I headed to Fort Ben to look for wildflowers. We found quite a few species, and I tried out my new lens some more. Redbud, Canadian Ginger, Flowering Dogwood, White Fawn Lilly, Squirrelcorn, Bloodroot, Sharp-lobed Hepatica, False Rue Anemone, Bristly Buttercup, and Virginia Spring Beauty were amo

2/27/2021 A King Eider had been present near St. Joseph, MI for about a week. I did not figure it would hang around, but I wanted to try for it anyway. Friday night, I drove up and grabbed a cheap room for the night in St. Joseph. Saturday morning, I got bit by ignorance and a misbehaving cell phone. The other draw for the day was a chance to shoot with some friends and fellow birders. Mike Bourdon, Shari McCollough, and Jason Jablonski were all going to be there that mor

2/13/2021 This pretty much sums up my thought process last night/this morning. The subject was a Brant that has shown up about an hour from where I live. For some reason, there was a lot of internal debate on chasing the bird. It is a pretty rare bird for our state, and having one this close should have been an easy decision to chase. Yet, the final decision was not made until I was on the road and actually heading elsewhere; at least I was heading in the right direction.

1/18/2021 Well, it's 2021, and things are pretty much like they were in 2020. It's off to a good start, though. I got to photograph a bird I have not photographed before, and I got to photograph a bird I have never seen before. The Secret Mission - I understand owls are cool. I like owls. I also like sparrows. So, I think I am covering the gamut of birds with equal affection. The birding public at large tends to go nuts for owls, though. Enter the cute Norther Saw-whe

12/1/2020 The rest of my week-plus of vacation did not go a lot better than the start of it. The last three days, though, were relatively nice days. Saturday was a bit too nice (right, that is a thing). Friday (11/27), I got up and headed down to Monroe Reservoir. I had two goals in mind: photograph Common Loons and photograph Red-breasted Nuthatch. I arrived on a mostly cloudy morning and headed down to the docks at Paynetown. The loons were there in numbers. Fascina

11/9/2020 It would seem like I have taken a break. I am really just not getting that many decent photos on the weekends. I have not had a lot to show, and I do not want to post for the sake of posting. The last couple weekends have been a bit of a roller coaster. After a lackluster day looking for LeConte's Sparrows on 10/31, I stayed home on 11/1. I checked Facebook and saw that a Magnificent Frigatebird was being seen across town. Amazing! I hopped in the car and bol

2/8/2020 - 2/9/2020 And that's about all I can say. It, in this case, happens to be a Ferruginous Hawk that is spending part of its winter here in Indiana. It's a pretty rare species for the state; although we had one show up for a few years in a row starting back in 2015. I wasn't really planning on chasing, but then I saw that people were getting some decent flight shots. I spent the week watching reports and keeping an eye on the weather. Saturday looked like my best

A bit of history: Several years ago, my girlfriend and I did a two week tour of the southern parts of Florida. We started out down in the Keys, including a trip down to Ft. Jefferson, and worked our way up to Miami, Lake Okeechobee, over to Ft. Myers/Sanibel, and finally up to Tampa. As part of the trip, we spent a day on the beach in Miami Beach. It's not really my thing, but my girlfriend loves her beach time. We departed the next day to head up to Green Cay and the Lo