It’s 2021! What was your first bird of the year? Hopefully it will start off a year with vaccines for all and a beginning of a return to normalcy. This year, 2021, has to be better than the dumpster fire that was 2020, right? Happy New Year to you from the 10,000 Birds crew! May your year be filled with lifers!
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.
My birding year startet early when a Carrion Crow flew past our window at 00:09 a.m., and a good omen it was too for 2021: carry on! 😀
I have close to 50 White-crowned Sparrows living in the quince thicket behind my porch this winter. They were out early, as usual, pecking at the ground where I scatter white millet. They are a joy to watch and bring a smile to my face. Happy New Year to all.
Juncos, of course!
Herring Gull. Blergh.
Also Herring Gull. Leiden Netherlands.
Red-collared Lorikeet screaming by just after 5am!
Mallard was the first bird I saw at Ridgefield NWR in WA. But then I finally got my Pacific Northwest nemesis bird: Northern Shrike.
Tawny owl at 03.40
I have way too many House Sparrows nesting in my yard. But somehow I managed this year to look first at just the right spot on our fence and see a Vermilion Flycatcher and Broad-billed Hummingbird instead. That’s a win, in my book!
I heard a Common Paurque at some pre-dawn hour.
Six Pine Siskins braving the windy day in our garden here on the Olympic Peninsula. Normally this winter we have a small flock of about 60. Big flocks are very common this fall and winter.
Great egret….1/1/2021 at 7 a.m….strolling onto my lawn from the beach…catching a lizard, drinking from my pool…then going to the neighbor’s yard.
White-Browed Crombec