As members of an international community of nature lovers, we all experience the weekend in different parts of this wide, wide world. Consequently, only those of you who live in the northern temperate regions can appreciate how I’m feeling about this dreadful month. Author Anna Quindlen expressed this midwinter despair quite eloquently:
“February is a suitable month for dying. Everything around is dead, the trees black and frozen so that the appearance of green shoots two months hence seems preposterous, the ground hard and cold, the snow dirty, the winter hateful, hanging on too long.”
That said, no season is so dire as to chase all the birds away. I was most impressed this weekend with a Carolina Wren that would be much better off south of the Mason-Dixon line than it is here in Rochester. Corey’s Best Bird of the Weekend was a long overdue but still unexpected sighting at Baisley Pond Park in Queens, an Iceland Gull. It was the first Corey had ever found at Baisley Pond Park after several years of winter visits hoping to find some kind of unusual gull.
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.
A rather large flock of 27 Mistle Thrushes near the Black Forest on Saturday. Not a rare bird at all in Germany, but a very attractive one and I’ve rarely seen more than five at a time.
I got my lifer American Pipit while stuck in a cornfield for three hours. And some other grassland birds, like Northern Harrier, American Kestrel, Horned Lark, and Loggerhead Shrike.
Mine was Cave Swallow- several on the road to Chomes in Costa Rica. New country bird for me, they might be in CR every winter and are just overlooked.
A bird guide to Wakkerstroom could simply say “mostly Amur Falcons” and be both very truthful (abundant doesn’t begin to do that justice) and also be all the reasons you need to go there. They get my nod,
I can choose from 2 life owls for this weekend. A Great Gray owl has been seen in George C Reifel Bird Sanctuary south of Vancouver recently and I was lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time with someone who could show me.
Oh, and 2 Saw-whet Owls while we were at it.