How was your weekend? Any good birds? Tell us about your best bird.
My best bird of this busy weekend was the Northern Cardinal my daughter Ivy, all of three years old, identified by species and gender! Plus, she wanted me to add the bird to her as-yet-nonexistent life list. Corey’s best was the horde of Yellow-rumped Warblers at Prospect Park on Saturday morning; he’s missed those butterbutts. Charlie no doubt observed all sorts of sophisticated species this weekend, which I for one can’t wait to hear about.
What was your best bird of the weekend? Tell us about the rarest, loveliest, or most interesting bird you observed in the comments section. Plus, if you’ve blogged about your weekend experience, I invite you to include the link in your comment.
Red Knot. Here it’s a vagrant, and likely to be the only Knot seen this in Cyprus this year.
I had a visitor from your side of the Pond – long-billed dowitcher – plus water rail and the season’s first pintail at Chew Valley Lake in deepest Zummerzet.
Long-billed Dowitcher at Coxsackie Creek Grasslands…
What are the odds of two of the first three best birds being Long-billed Dowitcher?
Nashville Warbler! A new bird for the state and one of 14 warblers I had on Saturday.
A tie between the amazing pair of Crested Shrke-tits I saw at Cranbourne and the Brown Songlark at some marsh. At first I took it for a wattlebird, but it looked t clumsy hanging on a wire. It looked like a giant brown fairy wren with a massive tail which it pumped and the most massive tarsi I have ever seen n a passerine. Honourable mentions to the millions of parrots (all told 9 species, three lifers) and a dishonourable mention to the two Forest Ravens pretending to be skuas and flying wa off shore diipping amongst the waveheads for a lark.
And don’t the brown songlarks look unlike their drawings in any of the field guides? It took me weeks to realise what I was seeing until a nearby female gave the game away.
(I wish I’d bet on the long-billed dowitchers. I’d have done better than I do at poker!)
My neighbor and I have seen and identified three chuckar partridges! Will they survive on their own or should we do something so other animals don’t make a meal out of them?
@Chris: Not knowing where in the world you are makes giving any advice tough but Chukar are hardy birds that should be able to survive on their own.
My life Clay-coloured Sparrow at Palo Alto Baylands was bird of the weekend for me!
Finally, a phainopepla and a verdin! Two lifers at the very underrated Corn Creek Nature Preserve which is part of the Desert National Wildlife Refuge twenty miles outside of Las Vegas.