Posts

Sax-Zim bog (Duluth) and Chicago

 Duluth and Chicago, Jan 18th - 24th The only previous time I birded Sax-Zim bog in winter was in December 2004 - an invasion year for Great Gray Owl.  Sax-Zim is also a good location for winter finches, so an obvious if frigid destination for winter.  I tacked on some Chicago birding for introduced species (European Goldfinch and Eurasian Tree Sparrow).  Nine year birds in IL/WI and ten year birds in MN. This turned out to be somewhat of a fight with the weather - the day after I landed in Chicago a cold front with 6 F highs and 20 mph winds was forecast, so after a half-day of failing to find Euro Goldfinch I drove south to Peoria, which had slightly better conditions (12 F, 15 mph).  First stop was south-east of Peoria at  Mackinaw River SFWA where there had been a report of 100 Eurasian Tree Sparrows in one flock.  The flock I found had at least 100 birds, but most were American Tree Sparrows and it took quite a while to find Eurasian Tree Sparrow...
Post a Comment
Read more
  Texas Jan 7th - 14th : 194 species A gigantic loop, starting and ending in Houston, running down the Gulf coast to the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) then running back and forth across the RGV until driving back up to Houston via the internal route.  Highlights were the American Flamingo (Port Aransas), Red-footed Booby (Corpus Christi, USA life bird #752), Morelet's Seedeater (RGV), Mottled Owl (RGV), Crimson-collared Grosbeak (RGV), Red-vented Bulbul (Houston, USA life bird #753 - an exotic) and Scaly-breasted Munia (Houston, also an exotic) along with the typical RGV experiences of screeching parrot roosts (Red-crowned Amazon and Green Parakeet in Brownsville and McAllen respectively).  A good owl haul overall, with Great Horned and Short-eared up near Houston and Mottled/Barn/Eastern Screech down in the RGV.  Some weather challenges (cold front, windy) and a dry year in s.TX led to a little less diversity than possible. A Clay-colored Sparrow was a good find i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Jan 1 - Jan 6th highlights

 Jan 1 - Jan 6th highlights Jan 1st : Part of the deal with the Big Year is a certain amount of moderately sane rarity chasing, so inevitably I drove through the early Jan 1st snow squall to add Barnacle Goose early in the first day of the year, after the trio flew into the pond in Englishtown.  After the squall passed it got windy and remained cold, so the rest of the day's coastal birding was in moderately hostile conditions.  I did a sprint down to the Tuckerton area to look for Eurasian Wigeon (success, somewhat odd-looking individual) and Rough-legged Hawk (fail) right at the end of the day. Jan 2nd: Holly Lake at Tuckerton had frozen overnight so I didn't get another look at the Eurasian Wigeon, but I did find the Rough-legged Hawk along Dock Rd which flew onto a power pole and looked down at me - some of these Arctic birds don't register humans as that much of a threat.  Forsythe NWR (aka Brigantine) was partially frozen so only partially productive, and th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Lower 48 Big Year 2026

 Lower 48 Big Year 2026 Before the wheels come off, I wanted to do a birding Big Year in the Lower 48 states.  Big Year because I do like to list, and because I wanted to avoid becoming a daytime TV sofa zombie in the first year of retirement, and Lower 48 because I lacked enthusiasm for spending cumulative weeks on wind-blown treeless Alaskan islands looking for Asian vagrants.  Lower 48 is enough of a challenge, at least for the first time.  Also, because the ABA area now includes Hawaii I didn't want to spend a lot of time burning jet fuel flying trans-continent+trans-Pacific.  I've not yet birded Hawaii, so lack even basic experience on what to look for where. Generally my methodology follows the ABA Big Year rules in that: 1. Has to be on the ABA list to count (no random exotics) 2. Heard-only birds are OK (e.g. Barn Owl in TX) but I prefer actual visuals 3. Introduced exotics follow the ABA introduced species list Rule #1 might be bent in "edge cases" e....
Post a Comment
Read more