How was your weekend? Did you have a better one that the Arizona Cardinals or Baltimore Ravens, both of whom washed out of the NFL playoffs? Don’t be shy… tell us about your best bird!
My best birds were the Short-eared Owls I watched with Seth, Laura, and my new birding buddy, Debra. Corey finds it hard to play favorites after a successful pelagic excursion, but supposes Northern Gannet will do. Charlie’s bird bandwidth has mostly been devoted of late to Great Bustards (read that carefully), so they may qualify as his best of the weekend.
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.
Northern Gannet in flight by Corey
Awesome gannet photo, Corey. How do you do that, on a moving boat?
Since Jets aren’t birds, I’ll have to go with the ~100 starlings in my backyard. As sure a sign of winter as short days or piles of snow.
After the Cowboys’ humiliating loss, I talked my husband into a walk at our local State park in the warm afternoon sun. I saw a single double-crested cormorant drying off his wings among a million gulls.
@Wren: I was wearing a fish hat, of course! 🙂
Hi Corey – I worked all weekend so didn’t see any birds. How can the Northern Gannet not be your best bird! – if you haven’t already been to the gannet colony on Bonaventure Island in Gaspe, Quebec, Canada it is not to be missed. I have Gaspe roots so have boast about the fabulous birding there.
About 30 or so Red-breasted Mergansers, some of them doing the mating dance, on the East Beach, at Sherwood Island State Park, Westport, CT.
Great Gannet photo, Corey!
Had a great thrasher show in the Sulphur Springs Valley at this past weekend’s Wings Over Willcox Festival. Bendire’s Thrasher is nothing to turn up one’s nose at, but two Sage Thrashers took the cake. Gotta love southeast Arizona!
http://birdaz.com/blog
Upon careful consideration, and after thawing out, I think my best birds have to be the massive numbers of Razorbills we saw on the pelagic. Although the Common Murres and Puffins were also great.
And yes, that Gannets were nice. For non-alcids.
I have to admit I am somewhat tossed about the best bird for the weekend. The Sage Thrasher in Salisbury, MA was a state bird for me, and provided nice albeit distant looks. On the other hand, the Ivory Gull that sauntered by 10-15′ away from me in perfect light was pretty nice too…
http://www.picusblog.com/2010/01/bird-photography-weekly-73.html
A toss-up between the Cackling Geese and the Eurasian Wigeon, neither were state birds but they weren’t birds you run across every day either.
My weekend bird is actually from Jan 7th, but we just got back in the country so I’m posting it now :
We found Trinidad and Tobago’s 3rd country record of a Magnolia Warbler. I’m not ashamed to brag a tiny bit! Here’s the link:
http://nutcase007.blogspot.com/2010/01/third-county-record.html
We were realllly excited (to put it lightly)
I love the Gannet shot, very nice! Flight shots make me crazy, I like this one!
We went chasing loons this weekend at Lake Tenkiller in Oklahoma. Not only did we see over 400 Common Loons, but we found 3 Pacific Loons and 1 thrilling juvenile Yellow-billed Loon.
UGH! We dipped on both the ferruginous hawk and short-eared owls we went out to see, so I guess our best bird(s) were a huge flock of sandhill cranes.
Great gannet shot!
Does last Thursday count as part of the weekend? Then, my best bird was Masked Duck, seen at Viera Wetlands, Florida. Quite of few of the birders I met in Florida this weekend missed the duck or waited hours to see it, so the birding gods must have been smiling on me (first time in weeks!), because it was right there when I walked up to cell 4, right in the open! In alternate plumage. I could see it’s reddish body and bright light blue bill with my naked eye. I’ve wanted to see a Masked Duck for a long time, ever since I read Jonathan Franzen’s story “My Bird Problem” (it starts off with him finding a Masked Duck in Texas), so this was a very special life bird.
And yes, Corey, awesome photo.
Ah! A fortuitous weekend on the Silver Maple- all three nuthatches: a Red-breasted Sitta canadensis; a White-breasted Sitta carolinensis; and my first Brown-headed Sitta pusilla…
@Deana: When you see my post about the pelagic trip you’ll know why I was torn!
@Rick, Jill, Karen and Donna: Thanks!
@Rick: I’m jealous of all of those thrashers…
@Jill: That’s a heck of a find!
@Christopher: As I said on facebook, I am sooooo jealous!
@Donna: I’d like a Masked Duck…
@David: …and a Brown-headed Nuthatch.
Yes, what Corey said!
My best bird of the weekend was Gray Ghost – male Northern Harrier sitting in a field by Stimpson’s Island NJ. Check out the blog post at http://www.phillybirdnerd.net
What’s interesting about the nuthatches is that their feeding behavior (alternating between one-sunflower-seed-at-a-time forays and scaling and foraging amidst the bark of the Silver Maple) is that it seemed to reflect their distribution- this is the first time in the 3 years at this location I have observed the Brown-headed, uncommon in southern Maryland but probably almost unheard of here on the northeastern District line, which spent about 15 minutes before leaving; the Red-breasted only showed up two years ago, and is occasional, also staying about 15 minutes or so but returning most weeks; and the White-breasted, a perennial visitor and staying for consistent half-hours each visit…
I got lucky and got a picture of a Loggerhead Shrike with a mouse impaled on a thorn. Here’s the link: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_eDsYe_W-c-E/S1Mn338L1CI/AAAAAAAAD74/H9HLdnevXNY/s1600-h/Shrike-Loggerhead+IMG_7124.jpg
Relocating a single Lesser Flamingo (the 2nd record for Kuwait) in a huge flock of Greater Flamingos, a week since it was last seen in Sulaibikhat Bay. We sweated for this confirmation ahead of the two groups of birders that arrived Saturday night from UK and France to twitch this and Hume’s Wheatear for their Western Palearctic lists (which they did yesterday!)