Thursday, January 1, 2015

A new year

 

A new year-list for birds.  Cold and rainy today, we didn’t get out of the car much.  Made a nice loop-drive around the county and counted 52 species though.  First bird of the year was a house sparrow.  Shortly after though, we got a white-tailed kite.  That’s always a rush.  Lots of raptors here in the winter.  Went the entire year last year without seeing a ferruginous hawk, but found one on the first day of this year.  Got a green kingfisher and got the cattle egrets we were looking for.  An excellent start to the birding year.

 

We didn’t get any photos of the rarest birds we saw so I’ll send the best photos we got of the ring-necked duck.

 

 

 

 

2014 eBird results by number of species observed:

 

World                    Top 1,500.

North America      Top 650.

U.S.                       Top 250.

Texas                    Top 50.

Hidalgo County       11th.

 

A little better than we did in 2013.

 

We’re going to travel to the Pacific Northwest for the family reunion this year.  I think we’ll focus on the life-list and see if we can add some birds from outside our normal range.

 

 

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