Well, it’s official… no MLB team named for a bird is going to the World Series. The Blue Jays gave their all, but we now need to turn our avian-inspired athletic interest to the NFL, where at least a couple of football teams with bird totems are worth watching!
Without anything extraordinary on my weekend bird list, my favorite sighting was a pair of Hermit Thrushes, half hardy enough to hang around when so many other birds have left town. Corey, on the other hand, had several stellar birds this weekend, including a Sora at Central Park, a Vesper Sparrow at Willow Lake Preserve, an Orange-crowned Warbler at Jacob Riis Park, and a Broad-winged Hawk and five Turkey Vultures from the hawkwatch platform at Fort Tilden. It was another migrant at Fort Tilden that garnered the laurels this weekend though. A young Red-headed Woodpecker at that paused in its migration just long enough to allow a couple of pictures is Corey’s Best Bird of the Weekend.
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.
I also had a young Red-headed Woodpecker in the NYC area, this one at Jones Beach, Long Island. But, my bird of the weekend has to be the Clay-colored Sparrow I finally saw at a field in Queens, across from Oakland Lake. Though there have been many Clay-colored Sparrows around this fall, they have evaded me. So, when a local birder reported seeing one four times in a row in this field, I spent Thursday morning searching for it, without success. Saturday afternoon, I was about to give up again when the bird suddenly popped up! I quickly took in all the field marks before it popped down again.