Life Photos and Upgrades

This is a Horned Lark. I have some okay photos of  them. But
the flock of them were very cooperative today and I got this
photo upgrade.

Happy New Year!!

I hope everyone that reads this is having a great start to the new year. Now that we turned the page from last year, I have tried to make some smarter decisions. I had two New Year's Resolutions. The first was to give up soda. I had never been a big soda drinker until this year. When I was out chasing birds I would buy a couple cans with my lunch. Then I found myself buying soda when Laurie would have pizza or our Sunday dinner. Other than Sunday's there really wasn't soda in the house. The problem was neither was I, I was always out and about. So far, so good. I haven't had soda this year.

My other resolution is really self restraint. After chasing every bird I could for 365 days, I am finding it fairly hard to ween myself off of chasing everything, but I am. My plan is to bird on my days off and fish after work (when it is nicer). Because I am only birding on my days off (so far four) I am way behind my friends for the year list. I have a total of 95 birds so far, where as  Carlos Pedro already has 124!!!  I have to keep reminding myself that I am not doing a big year and that I will not be getting 290 species of birds. Still it is annoying the hell out of me that are so many easy birds out there that I haven't checked off. First World problems!

So other than holding myself back from driving to Narragansett after work for one hour of daylight, my other goal is to upgrade and get life photos of birds. A life photo is simply getting a photo of a bird I've never photographed before. As best I can count I have photos of 278 birds including trips to Florida, North Carolina, South Dakota, and the west.Of those, I have about 240 photos from New England. I put a photo album together and wrote the names of 300 RI birds in the margins. Obviously this leaves about 60 spots empty. I'm hoping to fill in a few of those spots this year with new life photos. I won't get 60 new ones, I probably won't get twenty, but trying to get  mote life photos is a goal.

I also want to get upgrades of birds I have photos of. Of the 240 or so birds not all of the photos are wallhangers. Far from it! When you only get a glimpse of a small bird 20 yards away for five seconds your photo most likely won't be jaw dropping. The good thing about this goal, is it is ongoing, and there is always room for improvement. I only have "perfect" photos of a few species. So although I have a photo of a Yellow Breasted Chat, it is nothing more than a lemon colored blur in a bush. Next time I see one (it is rare around here) I will be mindful that I need to upgrade the picture.

No matter what happens, I'm going into the year looking forward to hiking, fishing, and birding. Hopefully I can cut back on the self-imposed birding anxiety (I actually enjoy the stress and the reward, so it is harder than you'd think to let it go) and just enjoy being in the Great Outdoors.