Nothing stirs this birder’s sense of excitement and adventure like the preparation involved in a trip to a new part of the world. Studying field guides, reading trip reports, and arranging meetings with local birders can be a process that takes more time than the trip itself, but makes the anticipation that much more delicious. I’m headed to Singapore in a week with stops in Japan and I hope Malaysia. If you live in any of those places, I’d love to go birding with you!

Of course, everything required to get away for a week has kept me extremely busy, so I don’t even have a best bird for this weekend. Corey, on the other hand, had an absurdly good weekend of birding, adding six birds to his year list, accidentally breaking 300 species in New York State this year, adding a new bird to his New York State life list, and seeing Pine Grosbeaks in three different counties. His Best Bird of the Weekend? A Black-backed Woodpecker at Bloomingdale Bog in the Adirondacks, which kind of made up for the bird dodging him when he did a New York State big year in 2007.

How about you? What was your best bird of the weekend? Tell us in the comments section about the rarest, loveliest, or most fascinating bird you observed. If you’ve blogged about your weekend experience, you should include a link in your comment.

Written by Mike
Mike is a leading authority in the field of standardized test preparation, but he's also a traveler who fully expects to see every bird in the world. Besides founding 10,000 Birds in 2003, Mike has also created a number of other entertaining but now extirpated nature blog resources, particularly the Nature Blog Network and I and the Bird.