{"id":2413,"date":"2014-05-09T11:00:18","date_gmt":"2014-05-09T15:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/?p=2413"},"modified":"2014-05-09T10:43:44","modified_gmt":"2014-05-09T14:43:44","slug":"mackerel-skies-spring-birds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/?p=2413","title":{"rendered":"Mackerel Skies &#038; Spring Birds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>About 9:30 yesterday morning, I headed out to run some errands. When I got to the lake, I noticed the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Altocumulus_mackerel_sky\" target=\"_blank\">mackerel skies<\/a> over the north end of the lake and the nice, soft light. I stopped to make a photograph or two.<\/p>\n<p>As I walked back to the boat launch where the truck was parked, I noticed the birds in the trees along the road and the turtles basking in the sun.<\/p>\n<p>The section of road that runs along the beach and up to the bridge seems to attract many insect-eating birds. Later in the season there will be many swifts and swallows present, but yesterday I saw mainly Eastern Kingbirds.<\/p>\n<p>There were also \u00a0red-winged blackbirds and grackles present. The male red-winged blackbirds were very vocal singing\u00a0their distinctive &#8220;<em>conk-la-ree<\/em>&#8221; song repeatedly.<\/p>\n<p>When I got back to the truck, I decided that the errands could wait. Switching from landscape mode and wide angle lens to wildlife mode and &#8220;Big Bertha&#8221; , I \u00a0headed back towards the bridge photographing all the way.<\/p>\n<p>An osprey also appeared\u00a0briefly. It hovered near the bridge looking for prey and made one, unsuccessful plunge into the water before heading off. A couple of days ago, Joan and I observed an osprey exhibit \u00a0the same hovering behavior by the bridge. I guess that I&#8217;ll have to plan to spend some time \u00a0down there just to watch for ospreys!<\/p>\n<p>About 11:30, I headed back to the truck and my errands.<\/p>\n<p>[scrollGallery id=261 autoscroll = false width = 600 height = 600 useCaptions = true]<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>About 9:30 yesterday morning, I headed out to run some errands. When I got to the lake, I noticed the mackerel skies over the north end of the lake and the nice, soft light. I stopped to make a photograph or two. As I walked back to the boat launch where the truck was parked, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[23,4,67,93,92],"tags":[154,39,56,17],"class_list":["post-2413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amphibians","category-birds","category-early-spring","category-landscapes-2","category-monadnock-region","tag-birds","tag-clouds","tag-landscapes","tag-osprey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2413"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2417,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2413\/revisions\/2417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}