Monday. We birded for a few hours today. We saw a lot of the same birds we
saw yesterday, plus a few. More than a few. We saw an additional forty
birds. And of those... eleven were new. An american golden plover right on
the edge of the pond in front of our house. A yellow billed cuckoo. We've
been looking for this bird for years. It is an elusive swamp dweller.
We've never even heard it. We still haven't heard it. Today we found one
too pooped to move. He stood out on a branch in the open for half an hour
while anyone who wanted to see him got all the looks they wanted. The gray
cheeked thrush. He looks an awful lot like the swainson's. Blue grosbeak.
He's pretty good. The scarlet tanager; he is spectacular. Northern parula,
chestnut sided warbler, black throated green warbler, american redstart,
red-eyed vireo, and philadelphia vireo. Whew.
Today moved us from 348 to 359 on the bird count. They came so fast our
heads were spinning. Faster than we could keep up. Fortunately for us,
there were some local folks there who were kind enough to help us through
the blizzard of information required to identify all these birds this fast.
Now it's almost embarrassing having a bird count this high. We're not that
good. We can spot a new bird and spend half an hour by ourselves figuring
out what it is. Actually, we can spend that long figuring out that it's a
bird we've seen before and figured out before... and forgot. I think we've
seen so many birds now, not because we're good birders, but because we've
been so many places.
But we'll keep the count just the same.
Tomorrow, we'll go check out some purple martin condos in Rockport.
