Drew is a photographer and naturalist dedicated to sharing his experiences through photographs and writing. He has recently moved to Ithaca, NY and is exploring the local region and the world beyond.
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 Swamp Sparrow (Melospiza georgiana) - Summerhill State Forest, New York Sorry it was so quiet around here last week. I have had a busy week but now have some time to share a few new images. Songbird migration has finally gotten underway. For several weeks there have been huge flocks of Red-winged Blackbirds and American Robins around, but now many sparrows have also returned and are now on territory and singing. Last week, I was able to find and photograph four different species of sparrows in just two days. Over the next few days I’ll be sharing with you a few images of these birds while we wait for the warblers to start showing in the next few weeks.
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 Prairie Warbler (Dendroica discolor) - Falmouth, Maine It’s getting to be spring and the earliest migrants have arrived. In only about 2 weeks we should see the first arrival of warblers and the rest of the songbirds. With all this reviewing of goals this week, I’ve been thinking a lot about the spring and what I would like to accomplish. Once again, I thought I would take a few minutes to share what I have been thinking about.
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 Sunset over the Everglades - Everglades National Park, Florida If you have read over my last couple posts, you realize that out of the eight goals I set for myself this winter, I accomplished about two and a half. On any scale, that is a pretty overwhelming failure. Does that mean the entire winter was a failure? I hardly think so… In fact, I think this winter was a very successful season for me.
Sure, I wasn’t successful with what I set out to do back in October. However, if you have been following the blog for the last few months, you have seen that I have had some success behind the camera. I also have had several amazing experiences while traveling in South Florida and the Everglades. So how did I turn a season where I only achieved a quarter of my goals into a success? Here are a few pointers that really helped me.
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 Thayer's Gull (Larus thayerii) - Allan H. Treman Marine State Park, Ithaca, New York, As you may remember, I had put together two sets of goals for the winter, one to focus on my time here in New York and one set aimed at my time in south Florida. Yesterday, we looked a how successful I was with the Florida goals and today we will look at the goals for New York.
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 Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) - Picayune Strand State Forest, Florida Now that I am back home and spring is just around the corner, I wanted to take a moment to revisit the goals I had laid out back in late October. That’s one thing about goals, people often set them, talk about them, but after things are finished, few of us go back and really examine our goals to see if we met our expectations or not. With that in mind, let’s take a look and see how I did.
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After a couple days of sitting at the computer and moving files around, I have now successfully moved Wanderer’s Apprentice, and all my other sites, to a new server. For you, the reader, it should make no difference but hopefully things will be a bit faster and have fewer outages. If anyone is having any problems, please let me know.
The move also gave me an opportunity to make a few upgrades and improvements to the blog. Again, most are simply performance based, but one will hopefully make the blog a better viewing experience. Now, if you click on any image in a post, it will load a larger version. I hope you find this a valuable feature and it allows you to get a better look at my photographs.
If you have any problems or suggestions with the site in the coming days or weeks, please don’t hesitate to email me or leave a comment here. I think I have caught all the bugs, but I may have missed one or two.
Thanks for your help and look for new content starting Monday!
Today’s post is the 100th post on the blog since its first launch back in September, just about 6 months ago. I wanted to first thank all of you readers as this blog wouldn’t be much without your feedback and input. It’s great to have an audience for my writing and photography. I’ve got a few technical changes coming up that I’d like to mention as well.
First off, I have received feedback that people would like to see larger images available on the blog. Well, ask and you shall receive. This weekend I will be working on implementing a lightbox function so that you can click on the image and see it much larger. Look for this change to be online by Monday.
Second, I will be doing some additional work on the backend of the site. I will be moving servers this weekend. As I will be moving all of my sites, I have a fairly major task in front of me. Please be patient as I work behind the scenes and remember that new content will be coming soon!
Now, what do you want to see different on the blog? Is there anything you particularly enjoy or something that hasn’t really grabbed you? I’d love to hear your feedback here in the comments or via email. I’ve got a few new features in mind and starting next week I’ll be back to posting on a regular basis. See you then!
 Northern Parula (Parula americana) - Anhinga Trail, Everglades National Park, Florida Yesterday I looked at the flycatchers that can be seen and photographed on a regular basis at Anhinga Trail, so today we’ll look at the Wood Warblers. These small, typically colorful birds can be extremely difficult to photograph. Most prefer the canopy of tall trees and rarely come down to eye level. Well, at Anhinga Trail there are no tall trees so you can get lucky and get a canopy loving species like a Northern Parula at eye level.
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 Eastern Phoebe (Sayornis phoebe) - Anhinga Trail, Everglades National Park, Florida Anhinga Trail is known as one of the premiere locations to photograph Anhingas, herons, egrets, Wood Storks, and more. The place is so well known that on Saturday evening I witnessed well above $100,000 worth of lenses and camera equipment pointed at a single Great Blue Heron. It’s a popular place and I have been there so many times, I am much pickier where I point my lens these days. On Friday morning, I decided to focus on the often ignored songbirds of Anhinga Trail.
The marsh and reeds that line the edges of the canals can be extremely productive for a number of songbirds. On most visits, I see at least several species of warblers, a couple flycatchers, a couple blackbirds, and typically a handful of other species. Most photographers simply ignore these birds as they look for the charismatic herons and egrets.
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 Clay-colored Sparrow (Spizella pallida) - Eco Pond, Everglades National Park, Florida It’s always fun when you find an unusual or out of place bird when birding. I had the pleasure to do just that twice over last weekend. Now when I am talking about unusual birds, I’m not talking about the birds themselves being weird or strange, I’m saying that their mere presence is unusual. So this past weekend I had two pretty cool and unusual species show up in Everglades National Park.
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