I went to the Montezuma Wildlife Refuge in NY earlier this week. I did the wildlife drive and was happy to fing multiple new birds I had never seen before:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/235786879
This was exciting because I have never seen any cormorants before. It was cool to see it diving, although it did make this bird harder to photograph.
Sorry this is so long!
TL:DR: Pileated woodpecker sighted this morning!
I am brand new to inaturalist, and loving it! Today I went for a walk at Oxley Nature Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was a beautiful morning and I saw all sorts of wonderfulness, but my favorite was a pileated woodpecker. I didn’t get a picture of it, but I saw it with my own two eyes multiple times and got recordings of it on Merlin. Now I just have to figure out how to upload sound recording to iNat.
The first time this morning that I saw it, it flew across a body of water that I was walking next to. I heard a bird that was very loud and unfamiliar to me and then I saw this big bird with a red head (looked kind of maroon because of the lighting) fly over. I immediately started following, but lost him and he stopped making sounds. A little while later I was recording something else on Merlin and I stuck my phone in my pocket while it was still recording and just kept walking and when I pulled it out it said pileated woodpecker! I then continued my walk because it seemed to have gone and about 10 minutes later I was in the forest and I caught several glimpses of a big dark bird flying from tree to tree. Honestly, at that point I thought it was a crow, but then I saw it land on a tree and it seemed like a woodpecker so I started following it. It. At one point it landed on a tree right in front of me and fairly close. It was big as life and gorgeous with its red head and crest, but I couldn’t get my phone out in time to take a picture. I did get a couple of good quality recordings though. I had the best morning ever!
Not long at all, justineenjoyslife! The general public might not appreciate our excitement when we see a new species, but this thread is one place you can always come to find an audience that understands.
Good luck getting that audio file uploaded to iNat!
In the garden today, the Hamelia patens is a mass of butterflies and even a Sphinx moth this morning, which was new! But then, this afternoon, just next to it, gently hanging from a denuded branchlet of what I think is a one year flamboyan (but which obviously hasn’t yet flowered, so who knows), I found this friend.
I am not a butterfly expert so I will not even hazard a species guess but I took a few photos and then just stood there whispering “hi” and “thank you”. Sometimes I just feel incredibly humbled to think they found my little patch of green.
