Many of us in North America are in the midst of a long weekend so kudos to those of you who are taking a break from your relentless partying to check in. Birding isn’t all that interesting around here in July anyway! That being said, what was your best bird of the weekend?
The best bird of my weekend was the bright yellow and black American Goldfinch, a species so patriotic that it serves as the state bird of not one, not two, but three of these United States! Though Corey hopes to see something better on Monday, his best bird of the weekend was a flock of Monk Parakeets wheeling in the sky over Bushwick, Brooklyn, shortly after watching Spain defeat Uruguay in the World Cup. Charlie, alas, has nothing.
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.
Difficult to determine through the haze of a 4:0 victory celebration of Germany against Argentina, but I’ll have to say, it was nice watching a group of Common Swifts at very close range darting in screaming parties around the train station of Offenburg while I waited for a connecting train to my relatives (that was before the match – I have limited memories of what birds I saw after the match).
GO SCHLAAAAAAAND!!
🙂
Hands down, the piping plovers on Plum Island in Massachusetts! High-five to Christopher @ Picusblog for steering me in the right direction. they were so adorable! If anyone wants to see photos, I’m happy to oblige. I saw many other great species at Parker River, but there’s no topping the sweet, fuzzy little plovers. 🙂
Fluttering Shearwater in Wellington Harbour. I love seeing shearwaters so close in.
Just saw my first Boreal Chickadees and Gray Jays in Terra Nova National Park, Newfoundland. The three-toed woodpeckers are hiding from me.
It wasn’t exactly my best bird of the weekend, just my most peculiar birding experience of the weekend.
I was out at the sewage ponds looking for peeps. There was a bush full of starlings and/or blackbirds. I pointed my binoculars at it and, instead of a starling, there was a black bird with a bright orange bill. The bill was slightly decurved like that of a starling, only quite a bit larger. Before I could react it flew over the fence and out of sight, never to be seen again.
What the heck was that, I thought. Some kind of escaped cage bird? A crow carrying a bit of orange plastic? No idea, and the bird was gone.
But the peculiar bit kicked in a few hours later when I checked the 10,000 Birds blog and happened on a post about… Red-billed Choughs! There they were in the picture, cleverly impersonating the unknown bird I had seen earlier!
Now, I don’t believe in precognition or any other form of spooky ESP. And I also don’t believe that a Red-billed Chough made the off-course flight all the way to the west coast of Canada. So… what the heck was that about? I still have no idea.
A white-eyed vireo while I was walking along a gravel road in the area. Bill
When walking the dog at 6:30 around the pond I saw a little blue heron. I believe I have seen this bird before, but with a new bird book it was more recognizeable. So this is the first time it will be marked in my book as “seen”.
I found a new city park which seemed to be heron/egret heaven. I saw my first pair of yellow-crowned night herons.
Best bird of the weekend would have to be a pair of Black Backed Woodpeckers here in the Boreal Forests of Nova Scotia whilst doing the breeding bird survey. A couple of high fives were in order!
A pair of Blue-winged Warblers feeding a fledgling. Not the rarest warbler by any means, but weirdly a lifer for me. 37 eastern wood warblers down, only Swainson’s to go.
A common bird, but we saw a family of violet-green swallows on Lava Butte in central Oregon. One finally sat still long enough for me to get a picture!
http://slugyard.com/2010/07/violet-green-swallows-looking-for-fires/