How was your weekend? Any good birds? Don’t be shy… tell us about your best bird!
My weekend mostly lacked for birds. Not only was my family visiting from the Bronx, but I was also laid low by a stomach bug and consequently slept much of the weekend away. Still, I was pleased to spy a Brown Creeper in a neighbor’s tree. Corey’s best was actually a flock of birds. While out with Daisy, he started to hear a familiar chip note, finally realizing he was hearing Red-winged Blackbirds, which then were suddenly in around in numbers singing “honk-a-ree” from the trees… first Spring migrants! Charlie was chuffed, as I think they say across the pond, to see his first ever Great Chalfield Collared Dove yesterday.
What was your best bird of the weekend? Tell us about the rarest, loveliest, or most fascinating bird you observed in the comments section. If you’ve blogged about your weekend experience, we invite you to include the link in your comment.
Mike is a leading authority in the field of standardized test preparation, but he's also a traveler who fully expects to see every bird in the world. Besides founding 10,000 Birds in 2003, Mike has also created a number of other entertaining but now extirpated nature blog resources, particularly the Nature Blog Network and I and the Bird.
We saw 5 Eastern Bluebirds in our front yard yesterday morning. That was a first for us.
Robins! Can Spring be far behind?
We took a walk from our house down to the Manayunk Canal and Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, traversing ice and many feet of snow along the steep gradient down and back up. This was all for the GBBC. As we neared the bottom and were about ready to head back up we found a Great Blue Heron in the Manayunk Canal. As I looked more closely I saw the silhouette of a Belted Kingfisher just a few yards away.
I was really surprised that the Kingfisher was still around since so much water is frozen, though not the Schuylkill itself. Nearby along the canal we also scared up some Swamp Sparrows and one Fox Sparrow.
A charcoal drawing and watercolor that I did of the heron and kingfisher are on my blog.
A rather good observation of 2 Hawfinches seems an appropriate candidate if Corey is reading the comments here.
If he isn’t, I’d say it was a flock of more than 100 Rose-ringed Parakeets in Heidelberg. Invasive & introduced, but still dang nice to see on a miserable winter’s day.
@Jochen: I have a feeling that I’m going to be hearing lots and lots about Hawfinch sightings…
My best were male and female Peregrines passing back and forth over me.
Best bird was a Black-legged Kittiwake; this species is usually only a once-or-twice annual visitor here, but one has been in Port Washington, WI for about 2 months+. I am finally getting around to seeing it…
It had to be the Northern Hawk Owl, a lifer and it was awesome !! Here’s a pic. http://www.flickr.com/photos/puertoricanwildlifephotography/4357593261/
No contest! My best ever views of Bittern at Backwell Pond, a few miles away from my gaff in Portishead. Shame I didn’t have a camera and humungous lens with me and had to settle for what I could find on Creative Commons – a steam engine!
Let’s see… probably the Boreal Owl. Or the Northern Hawk Owl. The Tundra Swans, Barrow’s Goldeneye, and Northern Shrike were also nice. To say nothing of the Barred and Snowy Owls.
Yeah, had a pretty good weekend.
I missed the Boreal Owl!! I also missed the Great Gray Owl but I did get to see the Barred which was awesome and another lifer.
The three Rosy Finch species in New Mexico were really nice but it’s hard to beat seeing my lifer Roadrunner and Golden Eagle.
GBBC weekend! That’s where scientists in Cornell count the number of idiots (like me) they can get to stand in 2 feet of snow and count pigeons. 🙂 The brown creeper was my big bird, common though it may be it’s a lifer for me. But watching 2 downy woodpeckers keep landing on the same branches and fighting over them was entertaining. Despite the foul weather I saw pairs of woodpeckers, wrens, and red-shoulder hawks, and saw a crow building a nest. So maybe there is hope for spring yet.
Hi! I’m a newbie to 10,000 Birds so this is probably a good chance for me to get my feet wet.
So it’s hard for me to decide what was the coolest sighting this past weekend. A bird walk near the Hudson River netted faraway glimpses of about 3-4 bald eagles, and when one began circling directly overhead I was so in awe that I totally forgot I had a camera. I’ve never seen an eagle before, so it was an amazing experience and I hope I get to see more before they migrate northward.
But a short while later, our walk leader spied what turned out to be a peregrine falcon, again soaring overhead and into the treeline. I was astonished because I grew up learning about them being endangered and had no idea there were any in NY. So that was pretty cool too.
I’ve seen plenty of robins this winter (and as a novice birder was surprised to learn that some stay put rather than flying South), but am intrigued to hear that red-winged blackbirds are back in town. That was the bird that first got me going, so I can’t wait to see my first of 2010!
Took a NYC Audubon trip up to Croton… No red headed woodpecker (well, half a glimpse)… but the corker was the seven bald eagles. And watching a mature frolic with several immature. Fabulous, fabulous view.
On the way back from a few days in the Bahamas, driving north on I-95 in Florida. Stopped at the landfill around mile marker 141 and saw maybe two dozen White Ibis (a lifer for me) mixed in with a couple hundred Turkey Vultures and several hundred Laughing Gulls.
Bahamas were good, too, but technically they weren’t on the weekend. Best bird there was a Clapper Rail (also a lifer) hunting around in a small pothole on Little San Salvador Island. Not at all shy.