While so many spent the weekend obsessing over eggs, others cast their eyes to the feathered fruit of eggs… not necessarily Easter eggs, but different, non-chicken eggs. Maybe this whole comparison falls apart upon closer scrutiny, but these are still fine days to be looking at birds!
I enjoyed observing Wild Turkeys, clearly feeling bolder on Easter than Thanksgiving, foraging openly along the Palisades Parkway. Corey’s Best Bird of the Weekend was a pair of Red-shouldered Hawks that have taken up residence in his parents’ neighborhood in Saugerties, in upstate New York. It’s tough to beat calling red-shoulders interrupting the kickball game with the kids!
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.
Well, I did see a White-capped Albatross, and I dipped on seeing but heard the critically endangered Orange-fronted Parakeet. But my BBOTW was my lifer King Shag, a species with an astonishingly small global range (the Marlborough Sounds of New Zealand and that’s it).
Not nearly as cool as Duncan’s bird(s), but I did notice that the Grackles area finally back in southeastern PA (specifically, in Audubon).
Having spent Easter on the German Baltic Sea coast and Brandenburg, it is hard to decide on a single species. Therefore, I will first name the species that almost took the top position: rafts of Long-tailed Ducks, Greater Scaups and Black Scoters, White-tailed Eagles, hundreds of Common Cranes, a male Hen Harrier, Rough-legged Buzzards, 4 species of grebe, Bearded Reedlings, and finally around 30 Great Bustards.
The one species I chose as my BBotW is a fine male Smew as I think this might make Corey really jealous.
My BBotW was with out a doubt, in finding a group of Acorn Woodpeckers, living in a very isolated palm grove in the middle of the southern Baja, Mexico desert! There was a small trickle of water, that helped the Date Plams thrive, and the Acorn Woodpeckers had found a private little niche! For me this was like finding a Unicorn wandering around.