I spent a bit over an hour yesterday morning between 9:00 and 10:00 at the West Lebanon wetlands, a.k.a. Cranberry Ponds, which makes the area sound a lot nicer than it is. In spite of the commercial environment, I have photographed some very nice birds there over the years including Great Blue and Green Herons and Great Egrets. I’ve even had some photos from there published in magazines.
I did not go specifically for the Least Bitterns; I had some errands to do in the area. Jann and I had stops to make later in the morning in Norwich and Lebanon, so my time was limited.
While there I saw six Least Bitterns flying. My guess is four of them were different birds because of where they came from and went. One flew shortly after I arrived, and about 15 minutes later a pair flew, almost together, heading to the far pond which is well out of sight. I got a few very marginal photos of the flights, but none good enough to even think about posting.
Except for the flights, there was no action for the first 30 minutes. There were no bitterns visible to photograph. So I had to be content with a Red-winged Blackbird.
Suddenly a Least Bittern flew, and I was able to catch almost the entire flight. Some of the photos were adequately sharp and are in the slideshow here as the bittern flew to the phragmites across the pond.
This bittern did not disappear in the phragmites but stayed out to fish, though I did not see it get any.
After about 3 minutes, the bittern flew to the pond corner that was mostly hidden by reeds and leaves. I shot through them resulting in a diffuse green tint over the photo below.
Twenty minutes later a bittern emerged and perched near the water. A minute later there was a flyby. I believe it was the bittern that had flown into the hidden corner returning.
I managed to catch the last part of the flyby.
The bittern that perched by the water moved around, then decided to fly.
It was a nice way to spend a morning at the beginning of a week that will deliver much needed rain for three days.
HERE is my first 2020 visit to the Least Bitterns.
If you missed the fox kit blog, you might want to CLICK HERE.