Thomas and I are taking a month-long birding class at Emory Center for Lifelong Learning. Wednesday nights, we have classroom instruction and Saturday mornings, we go out into the field. This last week was our first class.

Wednesday, we learned how to look for field marks on birds, why some binoculars are $20 and others are over $100, and the difference between birdwatchers and birders - I think Thomas and I have become birders. Right now, we’re more interested in collecting species, than just studying birds. Oh well.

The Saturday hike was amazing! We went to Lullwater Conversation Park on Emory’s campus and saw 37 different species of birds - a few that were new to our list. We both saw one of the birds that we’ve been pining to see - barred owl for me, and wood duck for Thomas.

The trip had some excitement too. We watched a goose chase a hawk eating a squirrel, a bunch of crows beat up two owls and knocked one of out of a tree, and later at home, we watched a hawk catch a crow.

We both took our cameras on the field trip, but Thomas got much better shots - his camera does better in low light. The pictures in this post are mine, but I really suggest checking out his shots too.

Here’s are photos:

• Dallas’ Lullwater Park (34 photos)
• Thomas’ Lullwater Park (48 photos)

P.S. Does the coloring on my photos look off? My monitor keeps flipping from an orange tinge to a dark blue tint. I think I need to recalibrate it, but I’m not sure if it messed up the color correction of my photos too. Thanks!