What was your first bird of 2015? Hopefully it was as cool as the Short-eared Owl above, which was my first bird of 2014! Let us know in the comments…and, if you wrote a blog post or have a picture of your first bird of the year online somewhere, well, leave a link in the comments too.
Happy New Year from all of us at 10,000 Birds! And here’s hoping you see many great birds, including lots of lifers, in 2015! After all, 2014 was a pretty great year and there is no reason 2014 can’t be the same!
Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy and Desmond Shearwater. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.
Trumpeter Hornbills roosting in the massive baobob in the centre of our lodge in Chobe, Botswana.
Common Goldeneye on the Salzach in Salzburg, Austria
Staying in a cottage by the Mediterranean sea, Yellow-legged Gull was an inevitable first. Happy New Year from Mallorca!!
Oriental Magpie-robin on the island of Amoy, in Fujian province, China.
A Carolina chickadee and Northern Cardinal who appeared together at the feeder. I’m glad they beat the mob of house sparrows who arrived shortly thereafter!
A flock of Canada Geese while driving to go birding.
A grounded Snowy Owl, picked up overnight by a patrolling police officer and to our city’s animal shelter. I taxied it to the Owl Foundation’s hospital. It was a youngish male with a large semi-circular scorch burn to the primaries and secondaries of its left wing.
Our thinking is that it perched or somehow came in contact with an industrial chimney or exhaust flame and then crashed to the ground unable to fly.
It was checked over by a vet tech and appears to be in fairly good condition. Once new flight feathers moult in, it should be capable of release.
Snowies are precious and their journeys down south are perilous. Let’s hope.
Le Conte’s Sparrow just after sunrise. One of my favorite birds and a great start for 2015!
First of year was Carrion Crow in Suffolk UK.
Brown Honeyeater was the first and the 108th for the day was a Black-shouldered Kite. All 108 around Broome, so a good start to the year! Day two looks quiet in comparison with a monsoonal front heading our way!
American Crow on my way back from a warm-day run. Corey and Mark are right — I’m glad I didn’t end up with the most usual of suspects!
Saw-whet Owl, followed by Couch’s Kingbird…not a bad way to start a new year!
Mourning Dove! Slightly more interesting than last year’s Northern Mockingbird.
My first bird was an American Robin before first light when I picked up some friends to chase the Le Conte’s Sparrow at Abbott’s Lagoon on the California coast.
Varied Thrush, Portland, OR. We see them infrequently; only in the winter 🙂