Perfect weeks like the hot (but not too hot) one we’ve just enjoyed here in western New York remind me how good summer is for so many things other than birding. In terms of bird watching though, ’tis not the season to be jolly unless you’re either utterly devoted to your local resident species or on vacation in a place you might enjoy someone else’s local resident species. Fall migration will be here soon enough; for now, I want to soak up the sunshine.
My best bird of the weekend was the energetic Red-tailed Hawk that appears to live right beside the pool my kids and I visit. Corey did a bit better, enjoying tons of juvenile Yellow Warblers at Jamaica Bay.
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.
A female Yellow Warbler, exhausted from being constantly hectored by her young.
Common Swifts over Heidelberg, gathering in large “swarms” – it’s the final countdown, soon they’ll be gone.
I made the hike out to Breezy Point Tip to find the Piping Plovers which was a lifer for me. Although it is a ~10 mile round trip from where the Q35 drops off, so now I am also glad that I won’t be tempted to make that walk again in the near future.
I added a new bird to my life list, a Yellow-billed Warbler. The hot dry weather here in north Texas is bringing a few interesting birds to the water I have out on my backyard feeder. I got a couple decent digiscope photos out my bedroom window. http://thainamu.blogspot.com/2011/07/yellow-billed-cuckoo.html
Whoops, I meant Yellow-billed Cuckoo! (I’m distracted with my granddaughter who just flew in from Ethiopia!)
A Clark’s Nutcracker, maybe 20 feet away on a snag and posing handsomely for several minutes as we admired him. Runner-up: a very juvenile Townsend’s Solitaire drinking from the creek while Mom waited in a nearby tree. Both seen during a hike up the Green Canyon/Sugarloaf Mountain Trail near Big Bear Lake, CA. A beautiful and birdy Sunday morning — worth getting up before dawn ;~)
At the Cincinnati Nature Center I found a scarlet tanager, common yellowthroat, blue-gray gnatcatcher, yellow-breasted chat, indigo bunting, pileated woodpecker, eastern wood-pewee, and a great crested flycatcher (all lifers)
Rufous chatterer for me. Though African pygmy kingfisher is always great and a recently fledged juvenile was being fed all weekend at our campsite, which was rather nice.
What a beautiful pic.