WPBO Waterbirds

Today was very slow waterbird-wise, but the afternoon brought some amazing treasures.  Jeff McCoy radioed me in the early afternoon to say he found an orange sparrow.  Upon my arrival, we quickly ruled out LeConte's seeing the deep gray median crown stripe and deep gray nape.  Nelson's Sparrow was the identity of this bird!  I was able to lay eyes on this bird twice early on and again around 545 pm.  No photos were obtained, but efforts will commence tomorrow.  While I was looking for the Nelson's, I was again radioed by Jeff McCoy with news of a Scisso

Friday, Saturday and Sunday were all solid days at The Point this weekend.  Friday had the lowest numbers of migrating waterbirds of the 3 days, but some cool birds were found.  A late Yellow-billed Cuckoo came in from Canada.

Today at the point was another beautiful day, with temps nearing 70's and pretty blue skies.  Not alot was moving birdwise, though a good variety was available to patient viewers.  Tuesday was simply fantastic all around.  Following the warm sunny day that was Monday, with hordes of ducks but distant distorted looks, Tuesday had a still impressive total surpassing 1000 ducks.  Almost all of these ducks along with grebes and loons were within an identifiable distance against perfectly overcast skies.  Many season-high counts were tallied for species

Not quite sure what happened overnight, but this morning brought an absolutely wonderful flight of ducks to the point today.  Sunday brought under 300 birds total (mostly gulls), yet today with southerly winds brought nearly 7000 waterbirds total, almost completely comprised of ducks.  During the third hour of the count, I had over 2000 ducks.  That one amazing hour brought numbers larger than all but TWO Full count periods (8 hrs).  There were only a few species which made up the bulk of the ducks; Greater Scaup, Redheads, and American Wigeon.  A nice variety of da

Thursday brought a fairly slow flight for waterbirds overall, but some goodies were to be found.  An afternoon Sabine's Gull landed twice within good viewing range before heading off to the north.  In the evening, Jason B. found a juvenile Lesser Black-backed Gull which is surprisingly rare at The Point.  Friday brought a nice flight (over 1000) of waterbirds, with Redheads and Greater Scaup making up the bulk.  Scoters peaked for the season so far, with 57 birds...