While spring is widely revered as the season of rebirth, many of us celebrate birth during this time as well. My son’s birthday ushering in spring and my daughter’s showing it out serve as bookends to a seemingly endless parade of parties. April bears the most fruit for my family tree, including my own bad apple birthday this week. Does your family celebrate a lot of April birthdays?
While I didn’t notice any Neotropical migrants this weekend, I was pleased to spot a Tufted Titmouse, a species I tend to miss during winter. Though Corey spent most of the day on Sunday birding Sandy Hook in New Jersey, seeing 73 species of birds, including four new species for him for the year, his Best Bird of the Weekend was the Forest Park waterhole in Queens, where he spotted his first Louisiana Waterthrush of the year. The wood-warblers are back!
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.
Grace’s, Olive, and Virginia’s Warbler on Mt. Ord, east of Phoenix, all made for a pretty nice weekend as we westerners try not to go insane while the blogosphere fills up with face-melting wood warblers.
My best birds here on the Olympic Peninsula were the Black-bellied Plovers proudly sporting black bellies at last, as their breeding plumage has come in. They will soon head north for the summer.
My father and brother share a birthday in April. As for birds, most of the wood warblers have flown from Costa Rica. Still lots of nice birds to watch though, my faves this weekend being a pair of Great Antshrikes near La Selva and a couple thousand raptors migrating north. Best bird, though, was a surprise Keel-billed Motmot! This rare species has shown up before near La Selva.
April birthdays: sister, brother-in-law, and as of 10:50 EST this morning, niece. 🙂 (happy birthday to you too, Mike!)
Slim pickings this weekend, but a male Mallard lolling around in a puddle smaller than a kitchen sink was pretty amusing to watch!
My best birds in Eastern Ontario were a pair of Wood Ducks chasing each other from tree to tree. Spring has finally arrived with other sightings of Eastern Pheobe and Yellow Bellied Sapsucker.
Happy Birthday, Mike! Yes, so many April birthdays in my family that we serve a great big birthday cake at our Passover sedars. (Of course, it’s a sponge cake.)
My best bird of the weekend was my first Eastern Phoebe of spring (not for the year, having seen one back in January in Florida). The best thing about this Phoebe was that it was spotted by my friend Amy while we were walking through the woods of the NY Botanical Gardens on Sunday. Amy is not a birder, so this gave me a chance to tell her about the significance of Eastern Phoebes to northeast birders, how it means Spring Migration and the Birds are Coming! She really did appreciate the bird.
Either a bunch of brave Tree Swallows (on Saturday) finding something to eat in pools of meltwater on ice, OR Sunday’s Horned Grebes on their way from their Atlantic wintering grounds to their breeding grounds on Canada’s prairies.
Click on my name above for a link to my blog and to read more about them – and a sensational full blown breeding plumage male King Eider seen mid week.
Just ANOTHER Black Woodpecker…
Sorry, no April birthdays in our family.
I had 7 FOY this weekend but the best was Winter Wren, which had been my county nemeses bird since I moved here last year. After at least a dozen attempts I finally saw one at a new forest preserve that opened last November.
http://bushwhackingbirder.com/general/april-5-6-several-foy-nemesis-overcome/