2023 Calendar

My photographs of the world’s most beautiful birds in a hangable wall calendar to help keep track of, and I hope, enjoy 2023! The calendar comprises two 8 1/2 X 11 pages—the top page is a different bird each month; the bottom page is a calendar grid large enough for you to write reminders on each date.

Order by Thanksgiving to ensure delivery in time for the holidays.

Here are a few of the photos for the new calendar. You can see them all and place your order at: www.DarrylKonterPhoto.com/2023-calendar

Here's my 2022 Calendar! Order now!

Time flies, and so do the subjects of my 2022 calendar. This edition features 12 new pictures of the world’s most beautiful birds. And I’m returning to the original layout of the calendar: an 8 X 11 picture on top, and an 8 X 11 calendar grid below, giving you plenty of room to make notes on the individual dates (e.g. on April 15 you can write “Darryl’s Birthday!”). You can order your calendar at www.DarrylKonterPhoto.com/2022calendar

Calendars will be mailed out in early December to ensure delivery in time for the holidays. Thanks so much!

Our trip to SW Florida

Our friend Debbie posed the question in January: once we we all vaccinated against COVID-19, would we consider coming down to SW Florida for a visit in early March? The answer was, “YES!!”

We were so thankful to have gotten the shots even before we left. But hitting the road and visiting with a dear friend we hadn’t seen in over a year intensified our gratitude a hundred-fold. It felt so normal, and at the same time, so exciting. We hope it’s only a few more months before all of us can have that feeling.

We visited several of our favorite birding spots, and explored a few new ones, as well. I’ve picked my favorite pictures from our four days there for you to enjoy here.

The 2021 Calendar is here!

What a wonderful problem to have: more great pictures than I can fit on one calendar! But I’ve chosen 12 of my favorites, and you can see them all and order your 2021 calendar at my website, DarrylKonterPhoto.com/2021-calendar.

I’ll be accepting orders through mid-November. You’ll receive your calendar in early December, in plenty of time for the holidays.

Order your 2020 calendar!

The 2020 calendar features great pictures of birds from three continents. All the birds were photographed in the wild. I love sharing my passion for our fine feathered friends. Order your calendar now at www.darrylkonterphoto.com/2020-calendar. Calendars will be delivered in early to mid-December, in time for the holidays.

Small but Mighty

Measuring 11 inches from beak to tail, weighing in at three-and-a-half ounces, the arctic tern is the animal kingdom’s greatest traveler. Arctic terns migrate from breeding grounds near and above the arctic circle all the way to the waters off Antarctica. Researchers in England’s Farne Islands, where I took this picture last month, banded an arctic tern with a chip a few years back. They were shocked to discover the bird’s annual migration totaled more than 59,000 miles!

The chicks leave the nest within a few days after hatching, but hideout nearby. They start to fly in three to four weeks, but remain with mommy and daddy for another month or two. But then it’s time to fly. The arctic terns of the Farne Islands fly across the UK to the Atlantic, down the west coast of Africa past the Cape of Good Hope, then turn east or west before going south toward the pole. And then they return to the Farne Islands for breeding the next spring.

They stop in the waters along the way to eat fish. Arctic Terns breed on coasts and tundra from New England, Washington and the UK north to the northernmost limits of land.Their migrations take them to every ocean and to the vicinity of every continent. Amazing!

Puffins

Earlier this month, we spent two days in the Farne Islands, home to one of the world’s largest Puffin colonies. The census count last year showed about 45,000 breeding pairs, mostly on two of the tiny islands in the group.

The Farne Islands lie about two miles off the England’s east coast, just south of the border with Scotland. They are controlled by the National Trust, which is somewhat analogous to our National Park Service. Most of the workers we saw there were young scientists and college-aged scientists-in-training. For details on how you can visit, I suggest you visit https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/farne-islands.

You’re able to get quite close to the puffins—as near as a few feet. They’re quite oblivious to the people who come there every day in the late spring and summer to take their pictures.

They’re quite sociable, but it’s no singles scene. Puffins mate for life. The nest in burrows. Each spring, a pair lays one egg. It takes about 40 days to hatch. Then the baby—called a pufflet—spends another 40 days in the burrow.

Pufflets need about six weeks to get their flight feathers. Only then are the safe from predators, mostly seagulls. It also takes about that long for their colors to come in.

Their diet is mainly sand eels. They’ll stay on their breeding ground until late July or early August, then head out to sea. They won’t set foot on dry land again until the next spring!

The name is no mystery

Here’s another picture I took at last year’s Biggest Week in American Birding, the annual event held in and around the Magee Marsh east of Toledo. It’s going on this week, and it’s undoubtedly the best place in the world to see a great variety of warblers as you’ve never seen them before.

There is no mystery to how this bird got its name: chestnut-sided warbler.

They spend the winter in Central America (something I’d like to do, as well), and then come north in the spring to their breeding grounds in the northern US and southern Canada, from the Atlantic coast to the Canadian prairies.