Happy New Year! Did you ring in 2011 with style? More important, did you get your year’s birding off to auspicious start?
Alas, for the first time in a long time, I did not go New Year’s Day birding with my friend Seth; juggling binoculars while in a sling would be tough even in ideal weather, but during a Rochester winter it’s foolhardy. So I’ll count Black-capped Chickadees as my best birds. Corey, ever one to press an advantage, stormed out of the gate with roughly 100 California species since the clock struck midnight on 1/1/11. His best bird of a wicked weekend is his life Vermilion Flycatcher.
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. And as a bonus, be sure to brag about your First Bird of 2011 while enjoying the way other birders have begun their years.
As with the week before, I’m treating the whole week as the weekend (holidays, yay!). So it has to be my lifer North Island Brown Kiwi! Fabulous big old flightless bird. Two kiwi species down, three to go.
My best bird was my first bird for 2011, a hooded crow out of my holiday apartment’s window at the German Baltic Sea coast, flying through a blue sky over a snowy landscape. The fact that it was my first bird of 2011 is what makes it my best bird, not its status as it is one of the most common birds one gets to see there at this time of the year.
I also had a white-tailed eagle from the highway near Stralsund the same day, driving back to Heidelberg (me, not the eagle).
On the last day of 2010 I decided I would again attempt the traditional “century run” here in Collier County to jump start the new year. For those who might not know, a “century run” is an attempt to see 100 birds all within one county i.e. Collier County, FL where I live. A century run does not have to be conducted on January 1st. It can be on any day where one feels that the probability of seeing 200 species is high. In previous years, some other birding pals would join me on January 1st. Not so this year. I forgot that the Naples CBC was scheduled for today so that left Alan out. Other friends had other plans so I was on my own. Cutting to the chase, I succeeded (barely) with 100 species. My first bird of the new year and the new decade was a Great Blue Heron seen about 6:45AM as I was driving to the Kirby Storter Boardwalk in the Big Cypress National Preserve on US Rte. 41 aka Tamiami Trail. My last bird for the day (#100) was seen in Immokalee just as it was getting dark — a Rock Pigeon. My best birds of the day had to be the Louisiana Waterthrush (Kirby Stoter Boardwalk), Baltimore Oriole (Big Cypress Bend Boardwalk in the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve) and all five species of plovers + Killdeer at Tigertail Beach on Marco Island. There were plenty of big misses including many common species such as Northern Cardinal, Carolina Wren, Fish Crow, Blue Jay, etc. Some were due to bad luck and others were due to running out of daylight hours which at this time of the year, is about eleven hours.
2 island ticks this weekend but I don’t think anyone will disagree when I say the better of the two and best bird of the weekend was my lifer bohemian waxwing as opposed to my x-millionth scabby looking cattle egret!
Best bird of 1/1/11 had to be 2 Short-eared Owls who were barking and swooping down on a Red-tailed Hawk accompanied by a Northern Harrier (gray ghost) at Jake’s Landing! I guess that’s 4 best birds. . .
Cracking views of bittern and smew, for me. Gert lush.
American Pipit——about a half-dozen——at the tail end of a New Year’s bird walk at Greenwich Point Park in Connecticut. What a way to start the year … with a lifer!
My best bird of the weekend was a Highland Tinamou seen while guiding at one of my favorite sites in Costa Rica, Quebrada Gonzalez in Braulio Carrillo National Park. I could barely beleive what I was looking at through my bins as this species typically occurs between 1200 and 2500 meters and has never been seen in Costa Rica at 500 meters (the elevation of Quebrada Gonzalez) as far as I know.
Due to the scarcity of fruit at higher elevations because of prolonged rains, there has been an unprecedented number of birds that have moved to lower elevations during the past month. Other cloud forest species have shown up in the lowlands such as Resplendent Quetzals and Black-faced Solitaires but to have a more sedentary bird like a tinamou move downslope is somewhat alarming.
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Common Teal at Blackie Spit, British Columbia–my first ever in North America. Some photos at http://www.birdaz.com/blog .
Due to the wet and windy tropical weather the 27 Lesser Frigatebirds were the best, as we have not seen that many here before, just cruising along the coast! 4 Black Chinned Honeyeaters in the garden were the best “garden birds” this weekend as they swung around the trees looking for insects and hanging upside down.
On January first I saw, and got my first relatively good photos of, a Tri-Colored Heron. In the marsh behind our property the Blue Herons are starting to nest. In one area, there were Ibises, Great Egrets, Snowy Egrets, Little Blue Herons, immature Little Blue Herons, the Tri-Colored Heron and Wood Storks. It was a great way to start the new year!
it had to be the American Dipper that finished off our Christmas Bird Count on Sunday, 1/2/11 at Izembek NWR in Cold Bay, Alaska. Started the weekend with some beautiful Steller’s Eiders.
My best bird has to be the Osprey seen while on a morning walk at the seaside in Ramsgate on the KwaZulu Natal south coast. He dropped out of the sky onto a fish close to where we were walking along the promenade. Just to watch him plunge into the sea, shake himself off in flight, line the fish up with his direction of flight and fly off into the sea mist was just amazing. Ospreys are not very common here and sighting them is always very special for me..
I didn’t have anything spectacular over the holiday weekend. I did see a young redhead duck, and a horned grebe at Pinchot Lake in York Co. PA and those were pretty nice. Perhaps my favorite sightings, though, were the 3 American Kestrels I had. Those little falcons have rather seriously declined over the past years and finding 3 of them in my forays was pretty sweet.
I was very happy to get a Townsend’s Solitaire in New Hampshire on New Year’s morning. We were enjoying breakfast when the bird showed up in the yard – photos here:
http://www.weekdaybirding.com/2011/01/townsends-solitaire-bow-nh-january-1-2011/