Well, with the the excitement of the Super Bowl over, as a bird lover one might have hoped for the Arizona Cardinals to have emerged victorious but at the very least I was rooting for the "Cards" as the underdogs. I suppose it just was not meant to be . Or in the "cards" as it were....
As for real bird related things, Gail Dwyer had called to report a female Harlequin Duck, Common eider and White-winged Scoter from Avalon the other day. Tom Reed and others had these same species with the addition of a drake Harlequin Duck and the return of the female King Eider yesterday at the 8t Street Jetty.
So Laura and I decided to venture out with Gail today to see if we could spy a few of these species and of course we were hoping for a lucky find of an alcid with the south to southeasterly winds today. While we were not lucky enough to find any alcids we did find 3 Harlequin Ducks (one gorgeous drake and two hens) a number of Surf and Black Scoter, a hand full of Greater Scaup, Long-tailed Ducks and a lone White-winged Scoter. Also present were 10 Common Eider and the hen King Eider. Aside from the size and structure differences, the fact that I had recently ready Michael O'Brien's article "Was Your Eider Smiling?" in the Tigrina Times on-line magazine on this site, was coincidentally resonant for today birding. Probably one of the most wonderful parts of the day was listening to the Black Scoter's haunting peeeew whistle calls and the Long-tails doing their ow ow owelepping. If you are looking to experience any of these calls I would highly recommend visiting the 8th Street Jetty in Avalon in the near future. The views (due to the closeness to shore) of these species was truly amazing. I was kicking myself the whole time for forgetting my camera at home as the light was superb for trying to photograph these spectacular species. If anything may have hampered the photographic attempts it would have been the winds.
After birding the 8th Street Jetty we ventured to 80th Street to look for the Eared Grebe. We were unsuccessful in finding Eared Grebe but did spy 6 or so Horned Grebes along with a number of other duck species. See lists below.
The Snowy Owl at Stone Harbor was seen as recently as Saturday by a few observers. Tom Reed also reported the following at the Villas WMA; one White-winged Crossbill, the continuing female Eurasian Wigeon, Redhead and the addition of a Canvasback. Two drake Wood Ducks were a nice find for this time of year along with the typical flock of Rusty Blackbirds and Chipping Sparrows. The Red-headed Woodpeckers were not noted but probably present.
The Selasphorous Hummingbird (Rufous/Allen's) is still coming to the feeder on New England Ave. as of today according to Karl Lukens. Lastly the dark morph Rough-legged Hawk, American Bittern and Short-eared Owl were seen at Jake's Landing around sunset as of Saturday.
Location: 8th Ave Jetty
Observation date: 2/1/09
Number of species: 14
Brant 35
Greater Scaup 45
King Eider 1
Common Eider 10
Harlequin Duck 3
Surf Scoter 125
White-winged Scoter 1
Black Scoter 135
Long-tailed Duck 45
Common Loon 6
Ruddy Turnstone 3
Purple Sandpiper 20
Herring Gull 50
Great Black-backed Gull 1
This report was generated automatically by eBird v2
Location: 80th Street Stone Harbor/Avalon
Observation date: 2/1/09
Number of species: 7
Brant 135
American Black Duck 45
Mallard X
Bufflehead 125
Hooded Merganser 5
Red-breasted Merganser 6
Horned Grebe 6
This report was generated automatically by eBird v2
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