As spring migration heats up across the northern hemisphere every weekend is bringing more first-of-season birds through parks and backyards. Of course, these sightings will only matter to you unless you decide to share your best bird of the weekend.
Though Mike and I birded together for over half of the day on Sunday we came up with different best birds. Mike is convinced that he finally spotted his life Barred Owl with the aid of Laura Kammermeier, a sighting, which, if true, would put him ahead of me by one in the ABA. Fortunately for me, however, Mike’s sighting was of a stuffed animal that some cruel prankster put up in a tree, as you can see from the picture below.
“Barred Owl” by Laura Kammermeier
My best bird of the weekend was also an owl, a Great Horned Owl at Jamaica Bay for which a kind birder had told Mike and me to keep an eye out. Really, it was ears we needed, as we simply followed a raucous murder of crows to the beleaguered owl, my first Great Horned Owl of the year, and first ever at Jamaica Bay.
Charlie’s best bird was…actually Charlie’s been too busy looking at bees and butterflies lately to do much birding, but he promises he’ll try harder for next week.
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.
Blackcap in the bag garden for me. First of the year. Nice.
http://countingcoots.blogspot.com/2010/04/ay-up-chuck.html
That would be the back garden. I don’t have a bag garden, but the though intrigues me nonetheless.
With “Tönn” still around 200 kms west in France and not much raptor migration at all over the weekend (just one each of the two kite species), I’d have to go with my first singing Nightingale of the year in the hedge rows south of Heidelberg.
And yes, I am SURE it was the nightingale and not the lark.
@Corey and Mike: Barred Owl? Do people still believe in the existence of Barred Owls? Look, guys, it’s the female form of the Great Horned Owl you’re talking about. Little hoax there from good ol’ Audubon. Thought that was cleared up by now, but apparently not?!
A Brown Noddy spent the weekend hanging out at the Ocean Baths – a rare visitor to Newcastle, NSW.
Best bird was a barred owl (sorry, Mike!) sitting on the telephone wire that we found Friday early evening, just a half mile from home. We hear them often, but rarely see them
@Jochen: No, Barred Owls exist, it’s just that Mike has never seen one…
@ Corey: no, they only existed for one single day in early 2007, and then they merged with the GH Owl again.
Come on, you know these things, let’s not play pretend here.
I’ll go with the Long-tailed Duck I saw lounging on a beach at Sandy Hook. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one on land.
Nice try, Corey.
But I’m STILL going with the BARRED OWL, not the “Barred Owl” that we saw plainly and clearly in broad daylight with our fresh, young, and no, not too hopeful, eyes.
In fact, Kudos to Mike for being the initial spotter. We narrowed it down to 3 trees based on other birders’ gen, and we stood craning our necks for several good and chilly minutes when Mike goes, “I got it!”
I looked up, and it was invisible to the nekked eye. So I raised my glass and scanned the tree about 70 feet high, to the left, behind a mish mash of thick limbs. And sure enough, the white, barred, not “barred” belly of the Barred, not ‘Barred,” Owl, peeked out from the limbs.
We moved into a better position and saw the half moon eyes of this barred, not “barred,” puff ball (I mentioned it was cold) close eerily above its hooked beak.
We helped steady another birder, an older gentleman with a cane, so he could lift his glass and examine the barred beauty. SO WE HAVE WITNESSES.
And despite the fuzzy photograph, which suggests, at least to the untrained eye, as it were, to be a teddy bear in disguise, we did, indeed, search for, find, and spot (not to mention luxuriate in) a long look at Mike’s first-ever BARRED (not “Barred”) OWL.
So put that in your coffee cup and swirl it.
:- )
Ouch.
Funny!
I had a great one. Barn Owl Baby (even though I just saw the top of the head), Barred Owls, Burrowing Owls, Great Crested Flycatcher and then some.
@Laura: Somehow the fact that you and Mike kidnapped and dragged a senior citizen into the woods and made him stare at a stuffed animal in a tree is supposed to make me believe that you managed to break Mike’s longstanding Barred Owl jinx? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence…
🙂
@Klaus: What, are you trying to make us look bad? 🙂 Sounds like you did have a great weekend!
over the weekend at Nairobi National Park during the game census i saw 4 red backed shrike, hoping they are migrating back to Europe and a martial Eagle feeding on a hare.
Two weeks ago I saw my life bird Long-eared Owl in a remote location in the Owyhee desert in Southern Idaho after an arduous expedition. Friday, I found one nesting in my own Boise foothills community of Avimor!
@Sameer: Or, even better, could you convince one to come to North America?
@Idaho_Birder: Isn’t that it always works?
Red-tailed Hawk, flying over the Rockefeller Estate, Westchester County, Sunday. It was the only bird I could get my friend Amy to look at and enjoy on our walk through some beautiful country (those Rockefellers knew how to buy land). Sometimes non-birders are more challenging than the birds. The Louisiana Waterthrush earlier that day at one of the many kettle ponds in Alley Pond Park was also nice.
A pair of scissor-tailed flycatchers as I was walking into church. They’re hard to miss.
Well, this is a case of best-heard, not best-seen … a gray catbird mewling in a tree, and two mourning doves on opposite sides of the street cooing in chorus. It was like listening to them in stereo!
Whooping Cranes at Joe Overstreet Rd. in Florida…but the abundance of Eastern Meadowlarks and Crested Caracara were nice as well.
My best bird of week was Greater Sage-Grouse on the lek. I a ton pics at http://www.radleyice.com/2010/04/something-to-grouse-about-boo-bad-title/ (bs-p, sorry)
“Brewer’s” Duck at the Iona sewage ponds here in Vancouver. It’s not a rare hybrid as such things go, but still very handsome.
I saw what looked like pale purple finches. My bird book does not show them in central Florida. Since it is 40 years old, perhaps a new book is in order. Any suggestions on a good, relatively inexpensive one?
I’m not sure when House Finch arrived in Florida, but it obviously postdates your field guide! The standard guides–and the only ones worth having as your primary resource–are big Sibley and National Geographic. Neither is terribly expensive, and you can find new copies of earlier editions of Nat Geo for next to nothing.
Enjoy the Florida spring!
My first osprey of 2010.
A Yellow Throated warbler that over shot his mark by a few states. Seen at Sherwood Island State Beach in Westport CT, yesterday. It was a thrill to see my first rare bird for an area.
Great Blue Heron, fishing in the creek out back. A lovely way to spend an evening of nice weather.
Saw a fair few today that were great but the ones that realy stand out are the Sand Martin’s Common Terns (1st sighting of the year for me)
And the Female Sparrowhawk taking a gray squirrel right in front of me in the park.
Never seen that happen before!
Cheers
AL
i recognize that Teddy. Wasn’t that one of Desi’s baby gifts?
@Mike and Laura: Wow…burned by my mom! 😉
A brown-headed cowbird arrived at our home in northern Fairfield County.
A flock of 25 bonapartes gull zooming over Ann Arbor (MI). We are inland, so it is a relatively uncommon bird here, we have only a 2 weeks window!
Rochester Birding Association’s Letchworth Stae Park field trip has had Barred Owl the past two years…in the same spot each time. This year’s trip is scheduled for Sunday, May 30th, I believe.
Last year we had two. 🙂
Sweet birds, all.
Corey, I think your mom was suggesting that you are an ingrate who takes beloved heirlooms from his son for owl shenanigans. Who was really burned there?
Kim, thanks for sharing that. We met at the RBA meeting, right?