A xenophilic day in Durham

I started off by going to the Eno River to chase the Great "White" Heron that had been reported.

White morph Great Blue Heron

Sure enough.  This thing was no Egret!

A photo of Mark taking a photo of the Great White Heron

Mark and Robert beat me there and had first dibs on moving in for photos.

Oops!

But I guess we got a little too close.

They went to find it further up stream while I had to run take a tour of the Duke Lemur Center.

Coquerel's Sifakas!

But I made a promise when I started this blog that I would stick to birds.

Sooo....

I ended the day at a Chapel Hill home where a selasphorus hummingbird has been showing up.

Again, Robert and Mark were there with cameras ready.

I got some decent looks at it through my binoculars, but it never sat still for very long during the brief, sporadic visits to the house and feeder. We suspect it may be patronizing other feeders in the area.

We ran out of light without getting anything close to the perfect, lucky, high def tail-feather shot that would settle its identitiy. 

Selasphorus sp.

This view gives me flashbacks of Ecuador.

Funny that a day seeing such an assortment of exotic creatures didn't net me any true ticks.  Obviously the lemurs are captive. The heron is still technically "Great Blue" despite being pure white.  And the hummingbird has not yet been separated between Rufous and Allen's.

Though I suppose one could count such a hummingbird as "Rufous" much like Gray-cheeked Thrushes get counted when they could plausibly be "Bicknell's." Or maybe somebody will get that perfect photo or net the thing and band it.

Barring that, what's a lister to do?