Tours of The Biggest Week

This is part 2 of a planned multi-part series about our trip to Ohio for the Biggest Week in American Birding. Part 1 talked about some general impressions and highlights. Today, I will share our experiences from the guided tours we took. 

We took advantage of a few types of guided tours. For some, you meet the guides at the location. Tours are generally 20 people plus two guides and last a couple of hours. We also took a couple of bus tours where you meet at the festival headquarters and they provide transportation. This is limited to about 10 people plus two guides and last half or the full day. These are typically further away and might include multiple stops. We chose two of each, and a night walk, although as I said in the previous post, we could have been just as happy with less scheduled time. 

Bird Photos [short]

 As I'm refocusing on this blog and my nature photography I will be doing bi-weekly posts here along with occasional short posts for special events or occurrences. On the off weeks, I will be adding more photographs to my Flickr feed. To help start things off, here are a few bird photographs from this year that I just uploaded. Check the feed for more. Enjoy, and be sure to return next week for the next installment from the Biggest Week In American Birding.

Pair of hooded mergansers on a local pond

Of course I include a great blue heron

Black skimmers returning to settle on the beach

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LOTS of butterflies (and some other insects too)

 I have several posts planned about my experience at the Biggest Week in American Birding; however, I'm already interrupting that to talk about a recent, fabulous day of butterflying.

For several years now, my wife and I have been joining butterfly counts sponsored by the North American Butterfly Association. These counts are similar to the Audubon Christmas Bird Counts. Except they are in the summer instead of around Christmas. And of course, looking for butterflies, not birds. So maybe not all that similar. But in each, teams go out defined areas year-after-year and count all the individuals they can find and identify.