The first weekend of September is a volatile time. A season of stasis gives way to months of movement and flux. What fun!
My Best Bird of the Weekend was a Peregrine Falcon gracing an enjoyable Rochester barbecue; good food, good company, and good birds make a powerful combination. But my extended weekend may hold even better birds once I hit Montezuma NWR. Corey’s BBOTW was a Barred Owl that was flushed by a murder of American Crows near his parents’ house in Saugerties, NY.
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.
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.
Nothing special, just another Black Woodpecker around Heidelberg/Germany.
We’re visiting my in-laws in Arizona and managed to find the nearby Glendale Recharge Ponds. At first glance the location is a barren, treeless expanse with the University of Phoenix stadium on the eastern horizon–not a place you want to be in the middle of a summer day. But we got up early and walked to the far side and found a little water in one of the ponds. Wow, there were about a million birds there! I got 7 lifers and there were probably several more I was unable to identify due to poor camera/scope/skills. The only good photo I got was of a Wilson’s Snipe, which turned out to be handy since ebird complained that I shouldn’t have seen it there and asked for documentation. That all said, I’d guess my best bird was a Wilson’s Phalarope–first time I’d ever seen their strange spinning behavior.
Coincidentally, mine was also a Barred Owl (a very sleepy one) here on the Olympic Peninsula, 3,000 miles away from Corey’s. I was so lucky to photograph it up close in daylight– photo here with DOT for the .
http://bikesbirdsbeachesDOTjimdoDOTcom
Pretty mundane given what everybody else on the mid-Atlantic coast of North America is out watching at Sandy Hook today, but I was very happy to find Hooded Warblers still singing away at the New Jersey Brigade Area in Morris County, New Jersey.
My best bird was a gathering of about 30 Eurasian Stone Curlew on Cavenham Heath in Suffolk, UK. They were very active with several often taking to flight.
My favorite sighting this weekend in Glens Falls, NY was a first-year male Rose-breasted Grosbeak. I’ve never heard the “sneakers on a gym floor” call before.
I also still had what was likely a Ruby-throated Hummmingbird (definitely a hummingbird, but it flew off before getting a good ID).
Toss up between the Great Blue Herons viewed on the way to the Bristol Renaissance Faire in Wisconsin, and the Wood Duck in Chicago’s North Pond yesterday. Neither is terribly special, but I always like to see herons, and I brake for Wood Ducks. 😉
A great weekend of birding Mount Desert Island in Maine with many bird highlights. But if I have to pick a best it would be two summer plummaged adult Lesser Black-backed Gulls bathing in seawall pond. But I also lucked out and got a lifer after the Cadillac Mountain Hawk watch, a Smooth Green Snake eating a large caterpillar. A life reptile.
Buff-breasted Sandpiper at Shenango Reservoir in western PA! A lifer, as was a Baird’s Sandpiper. Both birds are beautiful even without their breeding plumage.
Fall migration is making things lively in S. Ontario.
My best bird(s) on this long weekend would be Philadelphia , Canada and Magnolia Warblers plus 2 Yellow-billed Cuckoos today. Also a family of 4 Ospreys working a nearby river.
I made it back to New Jersey in time to see the Elegant Tern at Sandy Hook. It was well worth the effort for several reasons–I have seen Elegant Tern in Costa Rica, but only through a retrospective identification (you know, you look at a photograph and say “whoa, that bird is different!”), terns are cool birds, and the “false hook” was teeming with other great birds–American Golden Plover, Buff-breasted Sandpiper, and more Black Terns than you could count. Also, I just love the Hook and was so happy this great bird was drawing so many birders there.
Magnolia Warbler on a walk with Corey Sunday morning!
http://fingerontheshutter.com/2012/09/03/magnolia-warbler/