One sure way to heighten the pleasure of a special bird sighting is to brag about it later. Step right up and share your best bird of the weekend.
My best bird was a sharp Hairy Woodpecker doing its best flicker imitation by gleaning the ground for bugs. Corey’s was most likely a long-range Bald Eagle soaring just west of the Hudson River north of the Saugerties Lighthouse Trail. Then again, the Eastern Bluebird below seen at the Great Vly, also in Saugerties, doesn’t look so bad either…
What was your best bird of the weekend? Tell us about the rarest, loveliest, or most fascinating bird you observed in the comments section. If you’ve blogged about your weekend experience, you should include a link in your comment.
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.
That Blue Bird picture is awesome! Great shot!
Andrew
I didn’t get out as much as I had hoped but I did manage to run out to a local lake and pick up a nice, if not very distant, Red-necked Grebe. What a gorgeous weekend!
Lake Mburo in Uganda produced some awesome birds but the hands down winner for me was a huge lifer in the form of a pair of White-backed Night Herons – about 5m from a pair of Black-crowned Night Herons. One blurry photo I got actually shows both species in the same frame. Luckily I managed reasonable shots of both though.
Thinking it couldn’t get any better, we proceeded to see 4 African Finfoots in the space of 50min. Brilliant!! Uganda produced the goods once again.
I had a great weekend. Yesterday was 2 Jacksnipe (lifer), bluethroat (new country list) and common scoter (lifer). This morning I stumbled upon 4 lekking Black Grouse – never done that before…
A bunch of lifers for me this weekend! (Then again, I’m only one year into birding, so my lifers are probably pretty tame compared with everyone else’s)
At a nature sanctuary in Rye, NY along the Sound, caught oystercatchers, yellowlegs, a mockingbird scurrying across the shore (yes, I’ve never seen one before), and a pair of long-tailed ducks, along with lots of other seabirds and shorebirds. A goldfinch was singing at the tippy-top of a tall tree too.
But the best sighting by far (and also a lifer) was a pair of ospreys building a nest, and then putting it to good (if X-rated) use!
Just as it was getting dark and a storm was rolling in last evening, my wife and I spotted a sharp-shinned hawk on a branch about 15 feet over our heads clutching a feathery dinner. We watched him shred it for a while, but then he seemed to give us the signal that he wanted to eat in peace, so we moved on. The songbird he was eating was unidentifiable, so it didn’t make the day list!
My first ever Red-breasted Merganser at Deer Flat National Wildlife Refuge in Idaho!
Pine Warbler (and Palm Warbler and Louisiana Water Thrush) – our first migrants coming through Maryland!
The hummingbirds are back and this year they like my feeder! I assume they are ruby-throated hummingbirds, but they don’t have ruby throats. I guess they could be black-chinned. I’m having trouble getting them to hold still long enough for me to carefully examine them 🙂
Nesting Red-Shouldered Hawks on my in-laws property near Albany, New York.
Northern gannets plunge-diving on the bay side of Sandy Hook, N.J. Spectacular.
My first Eastern Phoebe of the season….(michigan)
A tie between the Osprey hunting in Prospect Park (first time I’ve seen that species in the park) and a Peregrine Falcon at Hells Gate.
A Turkey Vulture flying over the city of Vancouver as I was on my way downtown.
Returning Louisiana Waterthrushes and Northern Parulas in NC.
@Marcell – I still hold the record at Mburu of around 12 African Finfoots on one boat trip. They were everywhere! That place got me lots of birds I never saw anywhere else, including a possible White-winged Warbler.
Back in the midwest for Easter: Harris’s Sparrow, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Vesper Sparrow.
Two Clapper rails at Oceanside Marine Nature Study Area, 2 sanderlings and a male and female yellow-crowned kinglet at Jones Beach boat basin; sightings on Saturday.
Seems North Americans either find time to blog on days off or don’t have Easter monday off? Whatever the case may be, I am late.
Best bird of the long, long weekend (Friday to Monday):
One Osprey when visiting my mom 200 kms south of Heidelberg, on me olde stomping ground, my first of the season and a good bird anywhere in the SW of Germany. It didn no hunt though, so Carrie takes the cake.
Here in Hong Kong, a group of friends hired a boat on Sunday, 4th April to go to Po Toi Island, in Hong Kong’s southern waters. Later we went on a short “pelagic” afterwards.
We were greeted by Grey-faced Buzzards near the Po Toi Ferry Pier, and there were four species of flycatcher on the island: Blue-and-white, Japanese Paradise, Ferruginous and Narcissus.
During the boat trip we saw Long-tailed, Arctic and Pomarine Skuas, and Great Crested Tern. Blog entry here: http://johnjemi.blogspot.com/