Birding

Best Bird of the Weekend (Last of August 2011)

August 29, 2011 by Mike 5 Comments

If you live anywhere along the Mid-Atlantic Coast up to Maine, you’re probably happy that the weekend is over for a change. Hurricane Irene really delivered the pain to so many coastal cities and communities. But as Irene taketh with one 500 mile wide hand, she giveth with the other… assuming you’re a birdwatcher. To birders who survived her wild wake were showered gifts of rare terns and tropicbirds!

Corey’s best birds of the weekend may be his best birds of the year in the NYC Metro area: read all about his life Band-rumped Storm-petrel, Leach’s Storm-petrel, Bridled Tern, and Sooty Tern along with other gaudy sightings in his account of Hurricane Irene Birding in New York. My own Solitary Sandpiper sighting seems paltry in comparison.

Where some might dwell on billions of dollars in property damage and lost productivity, birders see mega-opportunity!

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.

best bird weekend

Written by Mike

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.

5 Comments

Duncan August 29, 2011 at 3:01 am
Since we were too drunk to actually find the Blue Penguins we were looking for…. I think I enjoyed the Red-crowned Parakeets pretending to be shorebirds and hopping around in the sand next to a sleeping fur-seal the most.
Pat ODonnell August 29, 2011 at 9:11 am
I would have happily traded in my Prevosts Ground Sparrow for those hurricane birds!
Jochen August 29, 2011 at 10:08 am
Black Woodpecker near Heidelberg, Germany.
Killer views, out in the open.
Beats pelagics seen from shore.
Maybe.
Robert August 29, 2011 at 10:40 am
Got a lifer this weekend while camping with the family in the Monte Cristo range in northern Utah. Pine Grosbeak! and lots of them!
Meredith August 29, 2011 at 12:11 pm
So bummed to miss out on the hurricane birds. (I actually would be marooned in NY today with little to do other than go out to Jamaica Bay, had not prudence and American Airlines’ flight cancellers prevailed.)
How does one pick the best bird? Certainly the most amazingly cool one was the lifer Indigo Bunting that a friend and I picked up at the Chicago Botanic Gardens in Glencoe.
But the most rewarding birding experience was the same friend and I, with the help of two fisherman, rescuing an injured Ring-billed Gull at Chicago’s Montrose Beach!
(posts on both are back-to-back at http://www.blog5b.com)