Here's my list of birds seen and/or heard this weekend (Thanks to Kathi, this list is way longer than it would have been if I had been alone):
Bold = LIFER
(there are only seven lifers...I must have miscounted. But still....)
***
Canada goose
Tundra swan (yes, I saw a live one)
Wood duck (In a TREE, no less)
Mallard
Northern shoveler
Double-crested cormorant
Great blue heron (100's)
Great egret (100's)
Turkey vulture
Bald eagle
Red-shouldered hawk
Red-tailed hawk
GOLDEN EAGLE (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
American kestrel
Peregrine falcon
American coot
SEMIPALMATED PLOVER
Killdeer
Greater yellowlegs
Lesser yellowlegs
Spotted sandpiper
Ruddy turnstone
Dunlin (500 +)
Ring-billed gull
Herring gull
COMMON TERN
Mourning dove
Northern flicker
Eastern phoebe
Purple martin
Tree swallow
Barn swallow
Black-capped chickadee
HOUSE WREN
Golden-crowned kinglet
Blue-gray gnatcatcher
Veery
SWAINSON'S THRUSH
Wood thrush
American robin
Gray catbird
Brown thrasher
European starling
WARBLERS:
NASHVILLE
Yellow
Chestnut-sided
Magnolia
Cape May
Black-throated blue
Yellow-rumped (Hey, Delia! I saw yellow-rumped warblers!!! Hee hee)
Palm
American redstart
Prothonotary
Ovenbird
Northern waterthrush
Yellow-breasted chat
SUMMER TANAGER
White-throated sparrow
White-crowned sparrow
Northern cardinal
Rose-breasted grosbeak
Indigo bunting
Red-winged blackbird (there were at least two RWBB's every five feet. And that's not an exaggeration)
Common grackle
Baltimore oriole
American goldfinch
House sparrow (very very sparse, thank goodness)
And now, some pictures:
I don't have an ID for this one yet. Anyone want to throw in? It's either some sort of empidonax or a female warbler of some kind.
UPDATE: Kathi can't comment (Blogger's acting like Frogger) but she agrees that this is some sort of empidonax)
Yep, another dead tundra swan. I Chimped, but the body was too torn up to figure anything out. I looked for bands, but this one is anonymous.
This one was alive, but looked bloody! I watched, and it seemed to preen most of this stuff off. I assume that it just had its head stuck in some mud underwater, and not injured in some way. I observed it for quite a few minutes, and it seemed just fine. Scared me, though.
Ovenbirds are just color-crazy. This one was stylin' with that brown-bordered orange head.
I would very much like this to be a gray-cheeked thrush. It's not outside the realm of possibility, since Kathi saw one the day before. Anyone?
UPDATE: A Swainson's. Crap.
Poor grackle. He got into a tussle with someone.
A muskrat and a lesser yellowlegs....an odd couple.
Feel free to sing "Muskrat Love" by Captain and Tennille. I'll wait.
Story:
It was getting late in the day, and I knew that I had to start for home soon.
I walked the lake trail that Kathi had pointed out to me earlier, and I am glad I did.
First, I saw the terns that we had glimpsed the day before, but couldn't ID.
Common terns, soaring and plunging into the very cold water for fish. They didn't even care that I was standing just beyond the water, snapping photos and giggling like a maniac.
They reminded me of the black skimmers the Flock saw at Cape May.
Gorgeous, elegant, graceful birds.
I was preparing myself mentally for the actual removal of body and soul from MY Lake Erie ( I never want to come home after being there), when I noticed that the terns had disappeared before my eyes.
A medium-sized bird was flying parallel to the beach with strong, purposeful wing beats. Hmm. That looks like some kind of dark gull. No, wait. That looks falcon-ish.
A peregrine falcon. Just for me.
(This is the best I could do. My eyes were all teary and I was jumping up and down and struggling with my new birding bra and trying to get the camera up to my face)
Peregrines hold a sacred place in my heart. Lucy was the first one I ever laid eyes on, and her mixture of sweetness and nervousness, and yet that unabashed fierceness, has endeared the species to my soul forever.
So I stood there on a lonely beach on Lake Erie, buffeted by cold wind and freshwater spray, and cried because a peregrine falcon had just passed by. Yeah, I'm all crunchy on the outside, but there's a chewy, gooey center in there somewhere.
Tomorrow: The eagle that didn't get away!
