Thursday, December 29, 2016

Christmas Bird Count(s) 2016

The annual Christmas Bird Count is a time honored tradition. I've been doing it one for the past few years. My territory is Pennypack park near the Environmental Center. I dutifully cover this territory year after year come rain or shine, warm or freezing cold. This year was of the rainy and cold variety. Needless to say, the day was pretty shitty. No birds. Cold  and wet. Peanut didn't even really have a good time. She was happy to call it quits by 1 PM. That was Saturday Dec 17th. The only photo that I managed was this miserable Cooper's Hawk.

Cooper's Hawk
Sunday was a totally different day. I offered to help Paul Guris cover his CBC area in Cape May and we had a much better day. Not only did we have better weather, but you can imagine that we had better birds too due to the habitat. We cover an area called Two Mile which is north of the Cape May inlet. It has beach and sea viewing, the inlet, marshes and also extends into Wildwood Crest. Peanut has a great day running the beach.


Here are a few Ruddy Turnstones that Peanut ran right past.

Ruddy Turnstones
We also found a these Conch shells washed up on the beach. I think they are really called Welks but whatever.

Welk Shells
Over in the marsh behind the Two Mile Restaurant, we found this very confiding Western Sandpiper. This bird sat still while we all took photographs. It didn't even fly away when Peanut ran past. I kind of felt bad for the bird - all alone on the marsh. It seemed out of sorts. I took a bajillion photos. This is the best one given the overcast lighting and rubble where the bird seemed most comfortable.

Western Sandpiper
We cruised through Wildwood Crest counting neighborhood birds along the way. Pigeons, Starlings, Mourning Doves and House Sparrows. Wait. Did that House Sparrow have yellow on it? Turn around. Let's give it another look. Sure enough, Andy and Paul had spotted a Dickcissel among the flock of House Sparrows at a feeder while driving 30 MPH down New Jersey Ave. Wow. These guys are good. Look at the subtle difference between the House Sparrow in the foreground and the Dickcissel sitting up on the bush.

Dickcissel and House Sparrow
The Dickcissel was the only one of it's species to be seen on the Cape May CBC. Sunday was like payback for my effort on Saturday. Yay.

4 comments:

Henry said...

These are some great pictures! Thank you for sharing your little adventure with us!
Love reading your blog.
Take care,
Lexy

Unknown said...

Hi! Wonderful blog! Do you accept guest or sponsored posts?

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