How was your potentially three-day weekend? Any good birds? Tell us about your best bird.
My best bird was Killdeer; I’m still amazed at how common these noisy shorebirds are in my little slice of suburbia. Corey’s fave was a full adult Bald Eagle flying over the Hudson River at the Saugerties Lighthouse (a pretty cool place if you’ve never been.) Charlie trumped us both with a juvenile Red Kite floating serenely over Great Chalfield…
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.
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.
Honey Buzzard migrating over Leimen/Heidelberg. Not a rare species in Germany but the long awaited first sign that raptor migration is either on its way or has somehow decided to not entirely skip my home patch.
The Northern Wheatear seen on an Amish neighbor’s farm, verified, and put on the Ohio rare bird alert. This bird was way off course but happily landed where he was recognized and viewed by many this past weekend. A life bird for me as well as scores of other visitors!! Our Amish neighbors are avid birders and provide many birding experiences for us.
A toss-up between the White-rumped Sandpiper and the American Golden-Plover, both seen on the mudflats of a local lake. Probably the Sandpiper gets the edge as it was a year first for me.
The first ruby-throated hummingbird ever to come to my feeder after years of trying, out here in Nebraska. She’s been back all weekend!
An American Avocet seen at Waukegan Beach during the Illinois Audubon Society Fall Gathering. A life bird for us!
Windhoek was very windy over the weekend, and I only managed 25 species at Avis Dam. Overhead was an African Fish Eagle…common bird further north, but special to see here in the drier part of Namibia, and without seeing anything else of interest it was great to have this great big Eagle flying overhead.
The arrival of the Vesper Sparrows means as much to us here in southeast Arizona as the first juncos of winter or the first robins of spring in the east and midwest. They’re back!
A Brewer’s sparrow at the Palo Alto Baylands, very rare in these parts, and usually only in September.
Australian Brush-Turkey. Boring to Australians, fascinating to me. Lots of interesting behavior – courtship, preening, male building a nest and giving me dirty looks …