It’s 2019! Happy New Year! What was your first bird of the year? Share it, and the story, in the comment section. Hopefully, it was a good one and not a pigeon!
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.
Waking up in the gloomy early morning hours of new year’s day, I heard from underneath the covers of my warm bed the chattering of Eurasian Magpies. No doubt, they were as relieved as I was that the indescribable racket of fireworks (still available to the general public in the Netherlands) had finally ceased. Happy new year to all you birders out there!
First heard was a Tui, first seen was a pair of Silvereyes
This morning I checked out the window and wondered where all the birds were. Eventually I realized there was a Sharp-shinned Hawk sitting in the platform feeder. So he became my first bird of 2019.
Carolina Wren, heard this morning.
Great Blue Heron at Ridgefield NWR in Washington. Best bird was a Eurasian Wigeon.
European Starlings, at my neighbors’ barn. *sigh* But at least I saw my namebird – American Kestrel – as well!
I was extremely careful to not look at the feeder that is always populated with English House Sparrows first thing in the morning, instead looking directly at the hummingbird feeder out the back window. I was rewarded with a FBOTY being an Anna’s Hummingbird.
Of course it was a feral pigeon… Followed by a white wagtail (Motacilla alba).
While I did spotted a Hooded Crow before, the first I raised my binocs at was the Eurasian Sparrowhawk
A pair of Bald Eagles on Round Lake, NY. I drove there just before sunrise and they were sitting next to each other on the ice each eating their own breakfast. (I was hoping for a gull to be my first bird but those eagles are residents at that lake so I did zero work for those.)