Happy holidays, friends… we hope you’re getting all the birds you asked for this year!
Corey’s Best Bird of the Weekend was one of the three lifers he tracked down in the company of Felonious Jive on Saturday, the California-endemic Yellow-billed Magpie. Now he needs to find one more to finally crack the 500 mark for the ABA-area! Mike managed to maintain his slim ABA lead by spotting the one Barnacle Goose amidst hundreds of Canada Geese in Van Cortland Park in the Bronx.
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.
Yellow-billed Magpie, a California endemic
A trip to Martin Mere got me upwards of 2000 Whooper Swans. Nice!
Nice one! I’m afraid my weekend was a bit of a flop, on the birding front: the best bird I actually saw was a humble song sparrow (does it become any cooler if I point out that the particular specimen I observed had some white and some black toenails?). The best bird I heard was an equally humble bushtit, and the best bird I saw from a great distance, but couldn’t identify, was a white duck-like creature, with a black smudge on the back of its head.
Pink-footed Goose. After getting up at 4 a.m. and leaving Washington, DC, at 5 a.m. with two friends, we headed for Peace Valley Park in Pennsylvania. After driving three hours, we arrived to see thousands of Canada Geese taking off from the reservoir to head for their feeding grounds. While we worried that the Pink-footed Goose may be among those that left, we scanned the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Canada Geese still lingering on the reservoir. I also looked carefully at each Gull, hoping that one would be the Iceland Gull reported there the day before. After searching from both sides of the reservoir, after 90 minutes we realized our Goose was gone.
Mindful that Christmas Eve would soon be upon us, and family obligations awaited, we looked at the time and decided that, since it was still early, we’d make a run across the Delaware River to New Jersey to look for the Pink-footed Goose that had been reported there. We had scoured the previous eBird reports and were convinced that these were two different birds.
When we pulled into Assiscong Marsh an hour later, we saw several birders walking the road, scopes on their shoulders. We asked each person we passed if they had seen the bird (the only reason these birders were here). No one had seen the Goose here either! As we started to think that we may have alienated relatives and added more stress to an already stressed out holiday by running off on a fool’s errand, we came across a man with binoculars who held his cell phone to his ear. Ahah, we said, he must be receiving a report on the Goose!
Sure enough, this birder (who is quite well known in New Jersey birding circles), said the Pink-footed Goose had been seen at Deer Path Park. We rushed to this park only to receive word that the sighting was from many hours before. Yet, after some scanning, we found the Pink-footed Goose among the hundred or so Canada Geese hanging out on the grass. We got some decent looks at a distance too far for good photographs and were walking closer when a jogger came through the flock, sending all the Geese into the air. We were quite disappointed until we realized the Geese landed on the pond behind us. For the next hour, we stood thirty feet from the shore of the pond and marveled at the beauty of this amazing Goose. And, best of all, it’s feet and legs really were pink, as pink as bubble gum. This life bird was a wonderful Christmas present for all three of us and, I’m sure, many of the other birders. May you enjoy the holidays as much as we did yesterday.
I walked around Anderson Lake here on the Olympic Peninsula, climbing over fallen logs and slipping on wet moss, and came upon two “common” birds sitting amiably side by side on a log– a male Common Goldeneye and a female Common Merganser.
First-of-season Common Mergansers (dozens of them) floating on various lakes and reservoirs in Brewster, NY, on Christmas Eve and Day. From a moving car but close enough to shore that no bins, no problem.
@Corey: congrats on the lifer!
@Mike: congrats on the Barnacle Goose!