Nothing stirs this birder’s sense of excitement and adventure like the preparation involved in a trip to a new part of the world. Studying field guides, reading trip reports, and arranging meetings with local birders can be a process that takes more time than the trip itself, but makes the anticipation that much more delicious. I’m headed to Singapore in a week with stops in Japan and I hope Malaysia. If you live in any of those places, I’d love to go birding with you!
Of course, everything required to get away for a week has kept me extremely busy, so I don’t even have a best bird for this weekend. Corey, on the other hand, had an absurdly good weekend of birding, adding six birds to his year list, accidentally breaking 300 species in New York State this year, adding a new bird to his New York State life list, and seeing Pine Grosbeaks in three different counties. His Best Bird of the Weekend? A Black-backed Woodpecker at Bloomingdale Bog in the Adirondacks, which kind of made up for the bird dodging him when he did a New York State big year in 2007.
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.
Scoters have been making appearances on a number of Front Range (Colorado) lakes and reservoirs this winter, and I finally managed to get my first (and tiny) slice of the action. I saw a White-winged Scoter (a lifer for me) from about 2/3 of a mile away, so it was definitely not a soul-satisfying-view.
My best bird was a flock of Brant at Battery Park in New Castle, Delaware on Saturday. I added two Delaware life birds and and four year birds this weekend! http://www.thermalbirding.com/2012/12/the-brant-continue-at-battery-park/
Wow, good weekend for Cory and happy to hear that you are headed to Singapore! Cant wait to see posts on that trip.
Best bird for me was a tie between Garden Emerald and Prevosts Ground Sparrow at Ujarras, Costa Rica.
Best was a Black Scoter. I live at the west end of Lake Ontario. The lower Great Lakes have become major overwintering sites for many bay ducks: Black Scoter, White-winged Scoter, Common Goldeneye, Greater & Lesser Scaup, Bufflehead and more, all thanks to the invasion of Zebra Mussels starting about 20 years ago. Zebra Mussels are a Eurasian mollusk that found its way into N. America in a visiting ship’s bilge water. (Thanks a lot).
Anyway, Black Scoters are rather elegant, males are jet black except for their flattened-out-ski-jump shaped bill which is bright egg-yolk orange.
More on this at http://www.mybirdoftheday.ca
Hi there, Mike – just wanted to share a few birding resources for Japan that you may or may not have already come across. These are some I’ve found while looking around on the web. (I just moved to Tokyo myself and am slowly getting started with visiting some good birding areas.)
If you’ll be stopping in Tokyo:
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=16125
If you’re going to Hokkaido (in which case I’m jealous):
http://hakodatebirding.blogspot.jp/
Kantori’s website (Japanese birding group):
http://webspace.webring.com/people/ek/kantorilode/
(There’s also a link to join Kantori through yahoo groups; once you join you can post to the birders’ forum and I’m sure you’ll get some great info from Japanese birders there.)
Also, you didn’t mention Korea as one of your stops, but perhaps for future reference:
http://www.birdskoreablog.org/
Kampai!
Lisa
I have a photo of a Snowy Plover on the beach here in Port Aransas but I don’t know how to get it to you. Sorry.
I have a new bird at home a pine sisken
I have seen a pair of Golden Eyes, 2 Bald Eagle sightings, several Great Blue Herons, a male Common Merganser, 2 Belted Kingfishers, a pair of Eurasian Doves, and a beaver.