Birding at Dutch Gap on Saturday
wood duck
mallard
black duck
american wigeon
northern shoveler
ring-necked duck
canada goose
great blue heron
lesser scaup
turkey vulture
yellow-bellied sapsucker
red-bellied woodpecker
hairy woodpecker
pileated woodpecker
eastern phoebe *
blue jay
carolina chickadee
brown creeper
carolina wren
ruby-crowned kinglet
northern cardinal
song sparrow
white-throated sparrow
We went in the late morning, so the temperature was inching up to 40 or so, but it was pretty windy. Gloves helped, but it's so hard to turn field guide pages with them on! The bright winter sun shines behind birders IDing ducks on the pond in the morning; the male wood ducks looked especially handsome.
*At first I wrote "out of season," but Cornell says they're year-round here, which is why one consults several sources.
On the Musak at Ukrop's: a Squeeze Singles tune. Bother, I can't remember which one and I am not going out to my car to find the CD.
Capital City weather: 18 degrees
At the Byrd: Eragon
2 comments:
Good list there! What guide do you like best in the field?
I tend to see the common yard birds since I don't get out too much--a little female Eastern Towhee flirted with the window outside my office yesterday for almost 20 minutes--she was so beautiful...
I love your lists--thanks for sharing your birding experiences!
I had been using a copyright 1980 Peterson's (Eastern) since college ornithology class. I love that it's eastern only and using it for so long means that I have a feel for how far into the book I have to flip to get to warblers. The paperback version I picked up at an estate sale for a buck or two is a very reasonable weight. It does have maps in the back, which stinks, but pictures and descriptions are side-by-side, unlike the ancient family Peterson's of my childhood.
For my 40th birthday, the folks got me Sibley's Field Guide to Bird of Eastern North America. I am still getting used to it, and did in fact carry it Saturday. Its idea of "eastern" carries it rather further west than Peterson, so there are all kinds of "extra" birds cluttering it up. It is the guide series that does such a nice job of showing plumage variation, so that's cool. There are also pages of thumbnail pictures, so you can get a quick sparrow overview. It's got great points, but I am still struggling to get the feel of it, so I can turn right to flycatchers, say, and see what their deal is.
Towhees are quite striking, and pretty easy to learn to ID by song and call.
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