Well, I have often been fortunate enough to see many of the vagrants that have been seen at the waterbird count during my falls here. However, this week I missed one of the rarest birds ever to be documented at WPBO. Therefore, I'm not posting it here, but I will leave it to Waterbird [...]
October continues to produce great flights in the last week. Aythya numbers continue to dominate the flights, but there have also been good numbers of scoters and dabblers as well. A large flight on Oct. 8 produced over 1,000 Aythya, with 900 of those being scaup. There were also 270 American Wigeons on Oct. [...]
Since our last post, things have slowed down a little bit here in the owl banding world. While the birds are still showing up, they are not keeping us as busy as last week. The weather this past week also affected our banding ability and kept us closed for a couple of days. While [...]
Highlights: Yellow-breasted Chat A Yellow-breasted Chat was observed on the morning of October 10. Unfortunately, all efforts to relocate the chat were unsuccessful for everyone except the initial observer, including me. Whether it's the blogs for the spring owl banding, summer owl banding, or as the fall field ornithologist, I always try to center the content of [...]
Waterbird migration continues to get better during the first week of October. On Oct. 6, the season's biggest day occurred, with a highlight being the major goose flight — 1,308 Canada Geese were counted, with the majority being counted in the last hour. A single Cackling Goose and two snow/ross's geese were mixed in [...]
Since our last blog post, we have been quite busy in the owl banding world. I had stated in the previous blog that we were hoping the change in weather at the start of this week would bring us some birds, and it definitely did that. For starters, let's talk about the Northern Saw-whet [...]
Spotted Towhee. Photo by Chris Neri Harris's Sparrow. Photo by Chris Neri HIGHLIGHTS: Spotted Towhee, Nelson's Sparrow, Lark Bunting, Harris's Sparrow. The Point's second Spotted Towhee was found on October 1 and seen again briefly in the late afternoon on the second. The Point's fourth Nelson's Sparrow was found on September [...]
Pacific Loon. Photo by Alec Olivier Waterbird migration has finally started to heat up this week. September 26 was the first big day since 8/30. Oddly enough, the first three hours of the count of 9/26 were fairly slow. It seemed like it was going to be another slow day when the [...]
Since our last post, things have been a little slower. Unfortunately, on the night of Sept. 21, we were closed all night due to strong winds. The night of Sept. 22 only saw us with one Northern Saw-whet Owl. This bird came right before closing early in the morning of Sept. 23. We were [...]
The weather this past week has been particularly variable, including south winds, strong north winds, and periods of rain. The birding has naturally also been significantly different daily, reflecting the varying weather patterns. As we mentioned last week, warbler migration has been winding down, but there are still occasional flocks that contain some diversity. [...]
