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 then I headed to Delaware to stage for the next day's pelagic.  Bombay Hook NWR had good numbers of waterfowl, and a locally-unusual American Tree Sparrow but Avocets had headed for somewhere warmer.  Did not find the Barnacle Goose in Smyrna but fortunately did not have to look that hard, having already seen one.

Jan 3rd: Ocean City (MD) pelagic, which had OK conditions but it was too cold to spend much time outside.  Dovekies, Razorbills, Atlantic Puffins and one Common Murre were the highlights but I missed a few birds (Manx Shearwater, Red Phalarope) that were present in low numbers.  As is often the case, communication on the boat was imperfect, and the diversity in the ocean was perhaps a little bit less than expected.  The other pelagic (Feb 15th) turned out to be covering the same MD waters, but longer and out of Lewes DE, so I canceled going on that.

Jan 4th: me + bonine + pelagic makes for a very slow recovery day.

Jan 5th: I had signed up for ABA's NARBA alert system, which seems to be rather of an epic fail, so I didn't note the Red-flanked Bluebird in VA until the 4th and drove for it on the 5th.  Took a while to find it - a skulker just like the other one in NJ - and it was a little drabber than the NJ bird of two year's previous (female vs male ?).  This is only the second one in the East, so by far the rarest bird locally.

Jan 6th: chased Tufted Duck in Dutchess Co NY unsuccessfully (but saw Trumpeter Swan) but redeemed the rarity chase by locating the Tundra Bean-Goose in Nassau Co NY before heading home to pack for TX.

end of Week 1: 102 species