I find that the end of March has very little to offer that isn’t better in other parts of the year. College basketball does nothing for me and neither does waiting around for the season to shift into spring. April lies dead ahead and I can’t wait to get there!
Interestingly (if you find such things interesting) Corey and I both share the same species as our best birds of the weekend though not the same exact birds. His was the very first he’s seen over the borough of Queens, which anyone acquainted with the avifauna of the greater New York area will find surprising. Adding it to his list further cements his eBird supremacy over the other Queens birders. I, on the other hand, saw many examples of this ubiquitous bird newly returned from their winter peregrinations and now swooping over leafless trees in their inimitable tippy yet ominous fashion. Welcome back!
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.
Frankly, and I admit it in shame, my best bird of the weekend is a captive one at Heidelberg Zoo: a pair of Steller’s Sea Eagles.
Especially the female is a huge chunk of avian power!
If a captive doesn’t count: a Raven in the Rhine valley near Heidelberg – again.
my “best” bird for last couple of weekends is actually a pretty boring, dull-looking bird: Rusty Blackbird. Seeing 100’s congregating in a rather mundane residential area (but with damp woods) close to me, though numbers being reported throughout the southeast have been verrry low for quite awhile.
Hm, I guess Greater Prairie-Chickens and Sharp-tailed Grouse on their leks. Swamp and Red Fox Sparrows were nice, too.
I happened across a Greater Roadrunner, first I’d seen in years.
My best bird this weekend technically didn’t happen on the weekend, but since I wasn’t yet at work this morning when I saw two female buffleheads on the 1-acre pond next to my cabin, I’m counting them as my best birds of the weekend
My best bird was a very cooperative ruby-crowned kinglet at Alley Pond Park in Queens, NYC. It was my first of the year.
I was going to say “Canada Goose” as I had missed seeing the Greater White-fronted Goose that was reported in our area. But then I got lucky. I was filling the birdfeeder when I noticed this small nondescript bird running up the trunk of a nearby tree: a Brown Creeper.
http://onejackdawbirding.blogspot.com/2011/03/cryptic-bird.html
Had little time to bird this weekend. My wife was away and I had the twins myself. Three year olds are not the best birders. Can’t wait until they are though. In the 2 hrs. I could get a sitter for, I saw some Cackling Geese. That’s a good one as they can be tricky when you need them.
Check it out here.
http://punkrockbigyear.blogspot.com
I suppose my best was Resplendent Quetzal on Volcan Barva, Costa Rica. It’s expected up there but is always tough to beat.
I have to stop reading these comments as they make me wish I was everywhere at once!
Great birds again…
I saw my first hummingbird of the season when it came to my feeder for 1 second. But better than that was a flock of Cedar Waxwings to my tin of water: http://thainamu.blogspot.com/2011/03/everybodys-thirsty.html
We spent the weekend with the inlaws in Omaha, Nebraska, where they got a dreary weekend of snow. But driving home to Minnesota on Sunday, we saw a batch of lovely tundra swans on some open water just north of the Minnesota-Iowa state line, which made our day! We also saw hawks every mile across Iowa, perched on wires, branches, even road signs, waiting for meals. Guess that’s why it’s the Hawkeye State.