Birding

Best Bird of the Weekend (Second Weekend of February 2012)

February 13, 2012 by Mike 14 Comments

Last weekend, millions of people devoted their full attention to football and the accouterments of Super Bowl festivities. This weekend, the annual Grammy awards along with the unscheduled and untimely demise of a pop icon ensured that music dominated wide interest. Do you think that any event in our lifetimes will ever focus so much positive attention and excitement on nature or birding? Not likely, right?

Still, we each know what we like and focus our faculties accordingly. Though Corey had a host of good birds to choose from (again) he has decided that his Best Bird of the Weekend was the one he found because he took the time to scope through a ginormous flock of Canada Geese:  a diminutive Cackling Goose at Blue Chip Farm in southern Ulster County, New York. I found myself on the shore of Lake Ontario on the most bitter day of this mild winter to observe over 1,700 maniacs take a Polar Bear Plunge. I brought my bins expecting nothing more interesting than a Bonaparte’s Gull, but was pleasantly astonished when a Purple Sandpiper flew right in front of me to forage the slush-scummed surface of the lake.


Believe it or not, this icy tableau includes a Purple Sandpiper

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.

 

Written by Mike
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.