Author Archives: Andrew Dressel

Hi All! I was traveling this weekend and so only got out into the countryside briefly on Saturday morning, and then I haven’t had a chance to show you what I found until now. Despite a short visit, I did manage to capture a couple of interesting and pretty sights on film. This first oneContinue reading “Rare sightings…”

As you may have surmised, I have a couple of pictures left over from the weekend. Here’s the little green-winged teal drake really getting into the duckweed. And young moorhen doing the same after the sun came out on Saturday. While this great horned grebe enjoys the nice clear water on the Schie river. OnContinue reading “Some like the muck, some don’t…”

The tiny European robins I see here are so shy that I probably average only one sighting per month, and I show you every picture of them that I manage to take. This morning, however, something had changed. Perhaps it was the dark and gloomy weather, they really seem to shun the sun, or perhapsContinue reading “Holy Robins, Batman!”

The morning started out dark and damp, but the temperature was mild, and the sun eventually came out, so it was not a bad start to the weekend. Best of all, I spotted another new bird for us in a tree with small red berries at the edge of a field. This “rather large, subtlyContinue reading “Field Fare…”

At some point, perhaps over the summer, I read or heard the name “collard-dove”, but that’s all I had, just the name. Then, on Sunday, as I rode by a farmhouse on the way from one open field to another, I spotted a few birds that I figured were wood pigeons or even rock pigeons,Continue reading “Oh yeah…”

After the rain blew through yesterday morning, the sun came out, and the wind kept right on blowing. Oddly enough, I saw more little birds in the air than I think I’ve ever seen here, and maybe it was in spite of the wind instead of because of it. They got places to be! InContinue reading “Something new, something old, and something cra-cra…”

I don’t have any good words for you this weekend, but I did go out into the countryside for the therapeutic effect anyway, and now I’ve got these pictures burning a hole in my pocket, so here you go. In addition to the hybridized mallards I already showed you earlier this month, the so-called “MallardContinue reading “Ducks and more ducks…”

On Saturday, I spotted this ghostly bird out on the polder, just chillin’ amid the geese and the cows, and I was all excited that I had spotted someone new, maybe a gyrfalcon. Welp, it might be a new individual to the area, but it is merely a “pale morph” of the common buzzard, andContinue reading “A few last stragglers…”

It was 46°F at sunrise yesterday morning, a new low for South Holland this season, I believe, and I read that temperature change is one of the many signals birds use to know when to head south. Thus, I’m sure that you won’t be surprised to hear that ducks are not the only critters onContinue reading “More change in the air…”

I guess I am getting to see a fall migration after all, because here is yet another new duck trying to catch some zzzzs beside the water. I couldn’t get very close, so the images aren’t too great, but the dark, wide, horizontal band around the eye marks the one on the right as aContinue reading “More ducks!”