Serendipity or Why I'm Always Prepared

This year, October is kinder to birdwatchers than to leaf-peepers. The fall foliage is downright boring. Nonetheless, my husband and I decided to go to Raccoon Creek Park yesterday, yet wanted to wait until temperatures climbed a bit. I just happened to check my lenses when my better half called me, "There's a hawk at our birdbath." Hawks are not an unusual occurrence in our garden, but I'd never seen one in the birdbath before. I quickly attached a telephoto lens to my camera and stole into the garage. I leaned on the wall to steady my long lens as best I could and shot one photo after the other. It was a real beauty of a bird and just seeing it would have been enough. Catching it on camera - and adding it to my growing number of bird species - was awesome. I finally went to fetch my tripod, but when I returned the hawk was gone. How wise of me to shoot some photos first!

After checking our bird books, we concluded that I had photographed an immature Cooper's Hawk. How fortunate that our garage door stood open (hawks gets spooked easily) and that I had my camera handy. In the next few days, I will look out the window a lot to see if our backyard visitor returns.

Later in the day, we ventured out to Raccoon and were rewarded by seeing a Belted Kingfisher, three Pied-billed Grebes (at least that's what we think they were), four Mallards, and a Blue Heron. What an awesome day for birdwatching!

Leaf-peepers and bald eagles

I have not posted any blog for a while. The reasons are two-fold: 1. Last week I updated my website, but made two fatal errors. I therefore spent all week trying to figure out what the problem was. Eventually, I found the mistakes all by myself and now my website looks fine again.
2. Fall foliage is upon us, my favorite time of the year. This autumn, however, the leaves are disappointing. I guess we just haven't had enough rain in late summer. On Sunday, my husband and I drove to Pymatuning Reservoir in northern Pennsylvania to search for foliage. The best spot was the Black Jack swamp area where I took the above photo. We enjoyed the summer-like weather to take a spin on a nature trail. At the end of the walk stood a man with a digiscope and asked us if we wanted to see bald eagles. What a question! Two islands away, there were indeed two bald eagles sitting in a tree. While we had seen eagles in flight before (not to mention the eagles at the National Aviary), it was amazing to see their heads in a still life, so to speak. To my husband's great disappointment, they did not fly while we were there.
For my part, however, I am astonished at the amount of wildlife here in Pennsylvania. In my homeland of Germany, a squirrel is a rare sight. While white storks have been reintroduced years ago, birds are often considered a nuisance that eat the seeds in the garden. And here I've seen four bald eagles already!