The holidays that characterize the last few weeks of the calendar year may designate this time of year the season of giving, but nature usually withholds its avian gifts in December. Without a grand migration or even a deepening of whatever extremes of heat or cold your part of the world endures around now, a birder can usually take a breather in mid-December. But 2020 clearly resists the storylines of more predictable years, as those of us birding New York state discovered this weekend.
My initial foray to track down a Hoary Redpoll resulted in windblown Common Redpolls and little else, so I ended Sunday’s birding in favor of football. Good thing the Giants were too awful to endure, because otherwise I might not have learned about or pursued what may be my county’s first Anhinga. This poor bird has got to regret whatever poor choices or ill luck drove it from the southern latitudes to Upstate New York! Corey uncovered a surprising number of wood warblers exploring half-hardy culture in the NYC area. Take your pick from Yellow, Nashville, and Orange-crowned for Corey BBOTW.
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.
Ross’s Turaco
A Rusty Blackbird was not enough to tempt me to make the chase to Fall City, WA but Common Grackle did the trick. Unfortunately fog made viewing really difficult, and left me with Rusty Blackbird as my BBOTW, as the Grackle was a miss. Still, a FOY species for me in WA.