Hi everyone! It’s time for the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC)! This annual event takes place this weekend from February 16-19. It’s easy to participate, so check out https://www.birdcount.org/ to join the fun!
Today Dave, Baby Birder, and I made our way out to Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge for the first day of the count. It was a fairly chilly and windy morning. As expected there was waterfowl galore and lots of gulls. We observed 27 species. Highlights included a Northern Harrier, two Bald Eagles, and a large amount of Gadwalls.
Gull Pond
Edwin B. Forsythe NWR (27 species, 2098 individuals)
450 Snow Geese
70 Brant
255 Canada Geese
9 Tundra Swans
200 Northern Shovelers
160 Gadwall
24 Mallards
150 American Black Ducks
60 Northern Pintails
7 Green-winged Teals
35 Bufflehead
14 Hooded Mergansers
55 Ruddy Duck
470 Dunlin
8 Ring-billed Gulls
87 Herring Gulls
2 Double-crested Cormorants
2 Great Egrets
7 Great Blue Herons
9 Turkey Vultures
1 Northern Harrier
2 Bald Eagles
11 American Crows
1 Carolina Wren
3 Dark-eyed Juncos
1 Common Grackle
5 Yellow-rumped Warblers
Dunlin flock (Image by David Horowitz)Hooded Merganser male (Image by David Horowitz)
We had an unexpected surprise on the wildlife drive today. Baby Birder, being well into toddlerhood now, isn’t super into birding. He likes birds just fine and is fairly familiar with ducks, geese, and eagles (my favorite was when he saw a Wild Turkey and called it a “duck-eagle” 😂). However, his true passion (obsession lol) is vehicles, so while he likes to see the birds his favorite part of visiting Forsythe is the other vehicles on the wildlife drive. And special for bird count weekend we had…a backhoe!
A GBBC first…a backhoe!
He was quite thrilled to see a backhoe laying gravel out on the road today, so we all had a lovely morning for GBBC Day 1. It’s supposed to snow 2-5 inches tonight into tomorrow so we’ll see what happens for Day 2.
I found a fun sequence while looking through old Barnegat Light pictures: a second year Great Black-backed Gull getting ready to eat a small dead shark. Gulls are omnivores and will pretty much eat anything, including small sharks. Just type “daring seagull eats live baby shark” into YouTube if you want to watch a gull in action. The bird on the right in the two top pictures is a Herring Gull. The captions are what I imagine they were saying to each other :-).
“A shark?…Looks like a treat!”Herring Gull: ” Hey Black-backed, you gonna eat that?”“Of course I’m gonna eat it!”“This shark is mine! ALL MINE!”
Gulls Simplified: A Comparative Approach to Identification by Pete Dunne and Kevin T. Karlson
Gulls can be a tough group of birds to identify. Yes, as a whole gulls are pretty conspicuous, standing around on the beach, flying not far offshore, or harassing you in a parking lot. But what are you looking at really? Is that a second summer gull? Juvenile? Subadult? Gulls go through so many seasonal plumage variations that it can leave the average birder feeling frustrated. However, if you are up for the challenge of setting your gulls straight, look no further than Gulls Simplified: A Comparative Approach to Identification.
Gulls Simplified was written and photographed by two very accomplished New Jersey birders: Pete Dunne and Kevin T. Karlson. They have both authored field guides and birding books so I was not surprised at the high quality and breadth of information and photographs in Gulls Simplified. (Kevin T. Karlson co-authored The Shorebird Guide, a field guide that I highly recommend for all birders).
Dunne points out in his introduction how many field guides are plumage driven. However, since gull plumage varies significantly, approaching gull identification through the lens of body structure, size, geography, and behavior would be more helpful. The book starts with basic gull id strategies, issues, and a small section about gull-like birds.
The species accounts are broken down into 5 main sections: “small to medium-sized gulls and hooded gulls”, “gray-backed white-headed gulls”, “large dark-backed gulls”, “dark horse gulls (rare or unlikely gulls), and “hybrid gulls”. There is also a chapter that features quizzes where the reader can test themselves on challenging ids. Keep in mind that this book features North American Gulls, but could be an interesting read for someone not from that region of the world.
My favorite feature of Gulls Simplified are the beautiful , high quality gull photographs. There are hundreds of exquisite gull photos that captures the fine details of the bird’s plumage and demonstrates the size/structure strategy that Dunne teaches us in the introduction. I especially love when the authors have a block of about 6-8 photos of the same species to compare its plumage changes as the bird grows and molts. The captions are also very helpful and descriptive. I’ve heard discussion from birders in the past about photographic versus hand-drawn/painted field guides. While I think both have their benefits (for example, I believe one of the top field guides is the Sibley’s 2nd edition which is all paintings), I think photographs are the best medium for Gulls Simplified since it reflects what you would really see in the field.
The other feature I enjoy about Gulls Simplified are the photo quizzes. Not only is there a section in the back of the guide with quizzes, but they are also interspersed throughout the chapters. With the quizzes you can not only practice the gull id skills you’ve learned, but identify other bird species you might find mixed in with a gull flock.
Dunne and Karlson bring up an interesting topic in the section called “Traditional Gull ID Problems”. According to the authors, they believe that sometimes people make gull id “complicated” because they are so busy looking for “rare” gulls in their region, making the identifications more about plumage than anything else. By accepting the idea that these “rare” gulls are indeed rare and unlikely to be spotted in certain regions, then we can “simplify” our gull id experience by focusing on our regional gulls that we are likely to spot. Not that those rare gulls can’t happen, but if we learn to appreciate our local gulls then a rarity would be more easily recognizable and special.
I highly recommend Gulls Simplified for all birders who have any sort of interest in gulls. This guide features interesting information, wonderful photographs, and useful strategies to help make your gull identification experiences easier and more rewarding.
What isyour favorite gull species? Tell me in the comments! (Mine is the Ring-billed Gull)
Team BirdNation spent a majority of October Big Day in Provincetown, Massachusetts. We visited 3 Provincetown locations: Race Point Beach, Herring Cove Beach, and MacMillan Pier. In the evening we went to Skaket Beach in Orleans. Overall we observed 20 different species and over 2,000 individual birds.
Race Point Beach, Provincetown, MA (14 species, 1068 individuals)
Large flocks of White-winged Scoters
5 Gull species: Bonaparte’s, Laughing, Great Black-backed, Ring-billed, and Herring
Other bird species: Double-crested Cormorants, Common Eiders, Northern Gannets, Sanderlings, Rock Pigeons, Tree Swallows, European Starlings, a Common Loon
Male and Female White-winged Scoters (Image by BirdNation)A variety of gulls: Black-backed, Bonaparte’s Laughing, and Herring (Image by BirdNation)Northern Gannets (Image by BirdNation)
Herring Cove Beach, Provincetown, MA (9 species, 212 individuals)
Rafts of Common Eiders and White-winged Scoters
Large flocks of Double-crested Cormorants and mixed Gulls
White-winged Scoters (Image by BirdNation)
MacMillan Pier, Provincetown, MA (3 species, 48 individuals)
We didn’t do much birding at MacMillan Pier because we were on our way to lunch but we did see some Common Eiders, Herring Gulls, and Rock Pigeons. The Pier is a cool little area of town and has great views of Provincetown Harbor. You can also see the Pilgrim Monument in the center of town, a tower that commemorates when the Pilgrims landed the Mayflower in Provincetown in 1620.
Pilgrim Monument (Image by BirdNation)
MacMillan Pier (Image by BirdNation)
Skaket Beach, Orleans, MA (10 species, 701 individuals)
We went to Skaket Beach around sunset. I didn’t have the camera while we were there, but we saw hundreds of Common Eiders and White-winged Scoters flying over the bay.
Golden Glow (Image by BirdNation)
Skaket Sunset (Image by BirdNation)
We had an amazing day birding in Provincetown and Orleans. Did you go birding on October Big Day? If you did tell us about it in the comments.
To read about our October Big Day trip in Cape May last year click here.
Seabirds are some of the most fascinating creatures on Earth. Over millions of years, these birds have mastered life on the open ocean. Seabirds are an elusive group; it’s hard to study them because they only come ashore to breed.
A seabird is any bird that spends the majority or part of its life out on the open ocean. While the term “seabird” can describe a wide variety of birds, this group is most often used to describe the orders of Procellariiformes and Suliformes. Procellariiformes include petrels, albatrosses, shearwater, and storm-petrels, which are more commonly known as “tubenoses”. Suliformes include cormorants, boobies, gannets, and frigatebirds. Gulls, jaegers, skuas, auks, and penguins are also seabirds.
I recently read The Seabird’s Cry: The Lives and Loves of the Planet’s Great Ocean Voyagers by Adam Nicolson. This beautifully-written book explores the lives of 10 species of seabirds. For each species, Nicolson explores not only how these birds live from a scientific standpoint, but how they touch the lives of people in emotional and spiritual ways. I particularly enjoyed reading some of the myths that native cultures tell about these fascinating creatures.
It’s clear that Nicolson loves the subjects he writes about. Adam Nicolson was born in England. During his childhood his father actually bought the Shiant Islands in the Outer Herbrides of Scotland, where Nicolson would watch puffins, fulmars, razorbills, shags, kittiwakes, and other seabirds breed. The Seabird’s Cry offers intimate accounts of the specie’s life, but also reminds us how fragile their lifestyles can be in an ever changing world of climate change.
I learned so many interesting facts in this book, so I wanted to share some of them with you. Below is one fact from each of the 10 species. You’ll just have to find out the rest when you read The Seabird’s Cry. 🙂
Fulmars were known as the “foul gulls” to the Vikings, since they would vomit the oils from their food as a defense mechanism.
An adult puffin raising a chick will dive between 600 and 1,150 times per day to get sandeels, sprats, or capelin.
Kittiwakes are the most populous gull, with approximately 18 million individuals in the Northern Hemisphere.
Some gull species have black heads instead of white heads. Studies found that gulls with black heads/faces actually scare other gulls, most likely to space out the breeding territory. Therefore, when black-headed gulls mate, they face away from each other to show their white bodies and use other senses during courtship such as smell and touch.
A Newfoundland study found that “extramarital affairs” were fairly common among guillemots. However, females who had these affairs would typically end up being less successful breeders than males who had affairs.
Cormorants and shags are most likely the closest in lifestyle and body-type to the first fossilized seabirds from about 100 million years ago.
Shearwaters, like other “tubenoses” have large olfactory bulb and therefore a strong sense of smell. Phytoplankton, which is eaten by the shearwater’s prey krill, emit dimethyl sulfide (DMS). Young shearwaters are exposed to DMS in the burrow, so they are able to locate krill by smell when they go foraging. Unfortunately, plastics also emit DMS, so seabirds are accidentally eating plastic not because it looks like prey, but smells like prey.
Gannets regularly fly over 350 miles or more while fishing.
Razorbills are the living representatives of the largest seabird that ever lived in the Northern Hemisphere, the extinct Great Auk.
Albatross have a lifespan of 60-80 years depending on the species. (Not from this book, but Wisdom, the 68-year-old albatross, laid an egg in December!)
Double-crested Cormorant (Image by BirdNation)
Northern Gannet (Image by BirdNation)
Great Black-backed Gull portrait (Image by BirdNation)
What’s your favorite seabird? Tell me in the comment section! Mine is the Laysan Albatross.
We are on Thanksgiving break, so Dave and I took a one-day getaway to Chincoteague, VA. Thanksgiving weekend is Waterfowl Weekend at Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge. Being a waterfowl enthusiast, I thought it was a perfect time to head down to Virginia’s Eastern Shore to seek out winter visitors. (We went to Chincoteague for our honeymoon in March, check out that trip here).Tom’s Cove Beach Highlights
Snow Geese! Over a thousand of them! The longer we watched the flock, the more Snow Geese arrived. They circled above us as they joined the huge flock resting on the beach. Mixed within the sea of white were “blue morphs”, a color variation of the Snow Goose. Individuals will mate for life, choosing the same color morph as their family members. Two white morphs will have white offspring, a pure dark with a white morph will likely have dark morphs (sometimes with white bellies), and two blue morphs will likely have blue offspring, although white offspring are possible. Dave spotted two individual with bands, one in which he got a clear picture of.
Snow Goose Parade (Image by BirdNation)
Snow Goose Flock (Image by David Horowitz)
Banded Snow Goose (Image by David Horowitz)
Snow Geese soaring overhead (Image by David Horowitz)
Shorebirds: Black-bellied Plovers, Dunlins, Sanderlings, Willets, and Yellowlegs
Black-bellied Plover nonbreeding (Image by BirdNation)
Dunlins on the go (Image by BirdNation)
Lots of Gulls (Ring-billed, Herring, Great Black-backed), Common and Red-bellied Loons, Surf and White-winged Scoters, Long-tailed Ducks, Bufflehead, Forster’s Terns.
No Parking Gull (Image by BirdNation)
Great Blue Heron (Image by BirdNation)
Extended Wildlife Loop Highlights
Chincoteague NWR has a 3.2 mile wildlife loop for walking, bicycling, and driving. For Waterfowl Weekend, the refuge opens up a 7.5 mile service (15 miles round trip) road to extend the drive. I’ll admit it was a little strange at first because it just seemed like a road with dead trees. However, further down the trail there were pools and dikes with many birds.
American White Pelicans!: We saw 2 American White Pelicans floating and flying over a pool. It was Dave’s first White Pelicans (I saw my first in NJ, read about the awesome experience with Mr. Pelican  here). I discovered while entering my checklist on e-Bird that the pelicans were considered rare in our location, so we were lucky enough to have some “rare” birds on this trip. At this time of year American White Pelicans are usually in Florida, the Gulf Coast, Mexico, or parts of California.
American White Pelicans (Image by BirdNation)
Yellow-rumped Warblers, more Bufflehead, Northern Shovelers, Northern Pintails, White-breasted Nuthatch, Snowy and Great Egrets, Great Blue Herons, Bald Eagles
And of course, the famous Chincoteague Wild Ponies. In March we had a cool experience of the wild ponies parading past our vehicle. There were a lot more visitors this time, so the ponies caused quite a spectacle (and traffic!). We again had a pretty “up close and personal” encounter with the ponies, although I don’t think the actually realized how close they came to our car. They were too busy just being wild ponies to notice how close they were.
Chincoteague Wild Ponies cause a commotionÂ
I’m so thankful that we had the time to head down for a fun-filled day at Chincoteague NWR. There’s always something amazing to see on Chincoteague Island.
Hi friends! This past week, Dave and I went on an amazing vacation to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. We’ve vacationed at Cape Cod twice in the past with Dave’s family (Dave going many more times throughout his life), but these trips occurred before we were birders. Therefore, we were really excited to go back to see what we may have missed in the previous years.
During our recent visit to The Wetlands Institute, we purchased the Peterson Reference Guide to Seawatching: Eastern Waterbirds in Flight by Ken Behrens & Cameron Cox. According to the guide, Cape Cod is considered one of the top seawatching sites in North America. Many locations throughout the Cape are discussed in the seawatching book, including our first vacation spot, Provincetown.
Provincetown is located at the tip of Cape Cod, where Cape Cod Bay and the Atlantic Ocean meet. We spent our first morning exploring Race Point Beach, on the Atlantic side. Race Point Beach is part of the National Park Service’s Cape Cod National Seashore. (Side note: interestingly, on Thursday there was a shark dangerously close to the shore attacking a seal, causing Race Point Beach to be closed. Other areas along the cape have reported sharks really close to shore over the past day)
Highlights from our trip (26 species):
1000s of terns (including 2 lifers)! Large mixed-species flocks that included Common, Least, Forster’s, Roseate, and Black Terns. The terns were varying ages/plumage and would frequently take flight and land again on the beach.
Least Tern juvenile (Image by BirdNation)
Roseate and Common Tern (Image by BirdNation)
Flock of various Terns (Image by David Horowitz)
Black Tern juvenile (Image by BirdNation)
Common and Red-throated Loons. In New Jersey, we usually don’t see loons until the winter. One cool thing about traveling 7 hours North of where we live was seeing some of our winter visitors in their summer spots. The Red-throated Loons were juveniles, and one of the Common Loons was sitting on the beach for a bit. Loons are designed to be expert divers, so their feet look like little wedges sticking out behind their tail. Therefore, they are pretty awkward moving on land. To get back in the water, this loon would slowly shuffle until the water helped it back in.
Common Loon on land (Image by BirdNation)
Red-throated Loon juvenile (Image by BirdNation)
Our first Great Shearwater.We saw a few throughout our walk.
Hundreds of Double-crested Cormorants (and lots of gulls of course lol)
The Crew (Image by BirdNation)
Small groups of seals close to shore.The first time I’ve ever seen seals in the wild!
Grey Seal (Image by David Horowitz)
Lots of shorebirds/”peeps”.Including Semipalmated Plovers, Sanderlings, Semipalmated Sandpipers, Willets, Greater Yellowlegs, Black-bellied Plovers, and Piping Plovers. The Piping Plovers were juveniles. We watched a few Semipalmated Plovers do what looked like some sort of dance or pair bond display.
Black-bellied Plover (Image by David Horowitz)
Greater Yellowlegs (Image by David Horowitz)
Piping Plover juvenile (Image by BirdNation)
Semipalmated Plovers doing…Something. (Image by BirdNation)
Race Point Beach was an amazing birding spot and a great way to start our vacation. Our trip was really action-packed, so instead of telling you about it based on each day, I’m going to split up the posts into specific places we went. There’s just too much for one post :-)! So this post was just about our Monday morning. Stay tuned to hear about our cool evening at Skaket Beach!
Dave and I took our first Barnegat Light trip of 2018 on Sunday, February 4. It was a chilly, windy, and overcast day. We left right before the afternoon rain started to fall, but we did see a decent amount of species.
On the jetty we came across this young gull with a sea urchin test. A test is a skeletal structure made of calcium carbonate. It contributes to the sea urchin’s five-fold symmetry and helps protect the internal organs. After a minute or two the gull dropped the test and flew away, since it turns out that it was already empty. As far as the gull itself, I’m going to venture and say 2nd winter Great Black-backed Gull, but I’m not 100% (don’t quote me on it, I’m still studying my gulls! They’re tricky to id lol).
Other birds found on the jetty included other Great Black-backed Gulls, Herring Gulls, Ruddy Turnstones, and Purple Sandpipers.
Herring Gull (Image by BirdNation)
Ruddy Turnstone (Image by David Horowitz)
Purple Sandpiper (Image by David Horowitz)
Dave took a few pictures of a Purple Sandpiper taking a bath on one of the rocks.
Shaking the Wings (Image by David Horowitz)
Clean Sandpiper (Image by David Horowitz)
In Barnegat Inlet we watched Common Loons, Red-breasted Mergansers, Common Goldeneye, Common Eiders, and Harlequin Ducks float and feed.
Common Loon (Image by BirdNation)
Red-breasted Merganser female (Image by David Horowitz)
Harlequin Ducks female and male (Image by David Horowitz)
On the beach there were a few American Crows and a small flock of Snow Buntings zipping around.
Snow Buntings (Image by David Howoritz)
American Crow (Image by David Horowitz)
It was a nice way to start off our Barnegat Light trips for 2018.
On September 7th, Dave and I went birding at Barnegat Lighthouse State Park. In our area that day it was supposed to be around 80 degrees (too hot for October in my opinion), so we escaped from the heat to the breezy shore.
We saw 12 American Oystercatchers on the beach, a personal record for us. Usually when we go to Barnegat Light we see T2’s family (a resident oystercatcher who you can read more about here), and sometimes an unbanded pair. So we were delighted to see such a high number of them. American Oystercatchers from South Carolina to Florida tend to be non-migratory. Many Northeastern populations use what is called “leap-frog” migration, where instead of migrating down the Atlantic Coast they winter in Northwest Florida (we learned our friend T2 does this, and winters in Cedar Key, Fl). American Oystercatchers will start forming pre-migration flocks in late summer and will migrate usually between mid-September and mid-November. Our group of 12 oystercatchers was probably one of those migration flocks. Our friend T2 was among them. I hope s/he has a safe migration and winter in Florida, and I hope to see T2 again for a 3rd year next summer.
American Oystercatcher flock (Image by BirdNation)
T2 with its migration flock (Image by BirdNation)
There were also many smaller shorebirds running around the beach and on the jetty. These included Semipalmated Sandpipers, Semipalmated Plovers (in non-breeding plumage) , Least Sandpipers, and Ruddy Turnstones. It was fun watching them run around the rocks looking for food. There was somebody else watching these “peeps”, although not for the same reason we were.
Sempalmated Plover nonbreeding plumage (Image by David Horowitz)
Least Sandpiper (Image by David Horowitz)
Ruddy Turnstone female (Image by David Horowitz)
Every once in a while, a Merlin would swoop by and startle the the shorebirds, sending them off in a frenzy flock to escape becoming lunch. Merlins are swift, little falcons who hunt prey by using high speed attacks. Shorebirds are one of the many menu options for Merlins, who like to feast on birds that weight between 1-2 oz. The first time we saw a Merlin at Barnegat Light was December 2016. It makes me wonder if it’s possibly the same one or another individual.
Merlin in flight (Image by David Horowitz)
Each year, Brown Pelicans show up around Barnegat Light in late summer/early fall, and during our August LBI trip we saw a few for the first time. This time we saw 10 Brown Pelicans flying towards Island Beach State Park (which you can see from Barnegat Light). We saw each pelican fly by individually, but learned they sit on some small islands out in Barnegat Inlet near Island Beach. I’m so happy that we’ve been able to see the late summer Brown Pelicans this year.
Brown Pelican over Barnegat Inlet (Image by David Horowitz)
Other highlights from our October LBI trip included a variety of gulls, a tern catching a fish and flying with it over our heads, and many Double-crested Cormorants.
Tern with a fish (Image by David Horowitz)
We’ve had a few personal records this year at Barnegat Lighthouse State Park. It was our first year seeing Brown Pelicans, we saw 12 American Oystercatchers in one visit, we’ve added a few birds to our life list, and we visited the park 5 times this year (as opposed to maybe twice per year in the past). I’m happy that we have been spending more time exploring and witnessing the seasons at Barnegat Light. I’m sure we will have a few more adventures on LBI for the remainder of the year, especially since the winter waterfowl will soon be on their way :-).
Autumn is my favorite season. I’m usually the first person to wish people a happy autumn. On the 22nd I actually forgot it was autumn until about 9 pm…probably because it was 90 degrees outside! We’ve had unseasonably warm weather the past week and a half, but of course that didn’t stop us from going birding. On Sunday Dave and I took a trip to Edwin B. Forsythe NWR for our first fall birding trip.
September is always a busy time at the refuge with a mix of fall migrants and summer stragglers. It’s also peak time for waders, who could be seen all over the wildlife drive. Wading Birds are not the same as Shorebirds. Shorebirds consist mainly of plovers, sandpipers, avocets, and oystercatchers. Wading Birds refer to herons, egrets, ibies, bitterns, spoonbills, and storks. Wading birds can be found at the shore, but they are actually listed in between Pelicans/Frigatebirds/Boobies and Hawks/Falcons in field guides, meaning they are more closely related to those families than shorebirds.
We saw 6 species of wading birds on this trip: Great Blue Herons, Great Egrets, Black-crowned Night-herons, Snowy Egrets and Glossy Ibis. There were 3 Black-crowned Night-herons hanging out on an island of shrubs. We actually found them in the same place I saw my very first Night-heron on my very first birding trip with Maria (my best friend/birding buddy), so that was special.
Black-crowned Night-heron Juvenile (Image by BirdNation)
The 6th species of wading bird was a bit of a surprise and the most interesting species for me on this trip. Dave and I were standing atop the Gull Pond Observation Tower when a medium-sized white wader landed in the water. At first we thought it was a Snowy because of its size, but then changed our minds and thought Great Egret. But the size seemed too small, and the legs weren’t quite the right color. A second bird of this species showed up.
They were also kind of, well, weird. Their movements while foraging were different compared to a Great Egret. They moved slowly, but would stretch out their necks and rock them from side to side. I feel like all the Great Egrets I’ve watched forage extremely carefully, while Snowy Egrets move quickly and erratically (sometimes I wonder if Great Egrets find it annoying to hunt next to a crazy-moving Snowy Egret lol).
Then we noticed the bill and it all clicked. It was darker compared to the Great Egret’s bill and too light to be a Snowy.
Immature Little Blue Herons! Immature Little Blue Herons are in fact white, not blue like the adults. Why are they white? Ornithologists believe that blending in with the other egrets puts Little Blues at an advantage. Not only do they catch more fishing with the other species, but they get extra protection by blending into a mixed-flock. They are also better tolerated by Snowy Egrets, who can be aggressive towards Little Blues. We’ve seen Little Blue Herons before (our first at Cloverdale Farm and second at Bombay Hook NWR), but these were our first juveniles. These Little Blues were fun to watch.
Little Blue Heron juvenile (Image by David Horowitz)
Little Blue Heron juveniles foraging (Image by David Horowitz)
Other highlights of our trip included a large flock of Greater Yellowlegs, Forster’s Terns in non-breeding plumage, Double-crested Cormorants, tons of gulls, a single Osprey, a Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Wood Ducks, and a Belted Kingfisher (our first for our Forsythe list) to name just a few from our 39 species total.
I’m glad autumn is finally here, but I can’t wait for the weather to finally cool down! I’ll miss the wonderful summer visitors, but am also looking forward to the winter birds. I’m happy we had the opportunity to enjoy all the waders before they migrate.
BirdNation 