What is your favorite bird? And every fowl encounter you've had under the sun

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That red bird is a Cardinal – nothing to do with the hierarchy of the Church.
 
Did a little scouting for the CBC yesterday. I logged 28 species with 235 individuals observed.

Found some more red birds

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A nice find was this Loggerhead Shrike. Only the second time I’ve seen it at this location.

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And finally, a really good find was this rare for this location and date, Hammond’s Flycatcher, one of the members of the notoriously difficult to identify empid family. You’ll want to note the extra long primary projection. That’s the clincher for this species.

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It’s just starting to get light. I’m off to scout another park. Be still my beating heart!
 
I wish to inform everyone here that the Great Backyard Bird Count (gbbc) will be held from February 14th through February 17th, 2020. This project is free. Google their URL for complete instructions. It’s very easy.
 
Some of these ran across the road last night,quite a comical sight 🙂 They had been picking at the green grass on the roadside opposite their swamp.
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That looks like either a Coot or a Moorhen. The illustrations in my bird book are very similar to the photo, but there are minor variances. Where do you live?
 
I’ve learned something. The bird book I had consulted consisted only of eastern U.S. birds. That’s why none of them looked exactly like the photo, but similar.
 
The Tucson Valley CBC is tomorrow. I’m totally geeking out. We have a biking team and a car team to cover our area. I’ve counted 38 species since I started scouting just over a week ago. I’m hoping to break 40 tomorrow. Hopefully we will with all these extra eyes.

A few highlights:

A wet Cooper’s Hawk on my parish’s campus during the rain last Monday.

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And a Prairie Falcon atop one of the large power poles in the Rillito River yesterday.

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My daughter brought home an injured black kite last night that had been struck by a car .She later took it to someone who takes care of injured wildlife.
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A shot from the CBC this morning. My territory covers a neighborhood that puts on a big decoration/light festival at Christmas so it makes for some fun photos. This actually is a very rare bird for this date and location. Any idea what it is? (it’s not a kinglet)

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JanR said:
A Flycatcher?
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I can see why you would say that, but the bill is the wrong shape. Flycatchers have triangular shaped bills, that are good for catching flies like this Greater Pewee we found early in the count. This was an exceptionally good find. Greater Pewees are an uncommon, local specialty that breeds in the pine forests of the sky islands in SE Arizona. They normally are in Mexico at this time.

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Another pewee shot. Poor lighting I know, but the sun hadn’t come up yet.

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A juvenile Sharp-shinned Hawk greeting the early morning sun

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Another shot of the mystery bird. It’s a Hutton’s Vireo which look a lot like Ruby-crowned Kinglets. I’m extremely blessed to get such good shots of this normally elusive bird.

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Some Black-tailed Gnatcatchers

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Vermilion Flycatchers at the U of A Extension Gardens

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And, the last bird I was able to count for the day, a Harris’s Hawk (another birder came in after us and picked up a Great-horned Owl after dark)

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In the end it was an epic day. We had 11 birders identify 42 species, probably a CBC record for this area and a great number for urban birding with no water features. My team had two species, Greater Pewee and American Pipit that no other team found, a first for me on the CBC.
 
You are an amazing birder!

Right now, I’m doing Project Feeder Watch – my two consecutive days being the weekends, Saturday and Sunday. (And yes, it is okay to bird on Sunday). Watching my feeders and counting the birds in and around them. Not a lot of hard work, but does require patience and being alert.
 
JanR said:
You are an amazing birder!
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Thanks, but in the light of full disclosure I did misidentify the Greater Pewee as an Olive-sided Flycatcher which would have been even more rare. I even called it into the Rare Bird Alert as such. 😳

That’s great your doing the GBBC. I haven’t done it for a while do to time constraints. The year I did do it, I had 40 something House Finches and 20 something Lesser Goldfinches perched in the desert scrub next to my yard on Sunday morning. They stayed there singing long enough for me to count them and then went about their day bickering about the food supply. It was like they were having their own little worship service.
 
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Flycatchers look so much alike throughout their species that it’s an understandable mistake. The only exception is the Vermillion Flycatcher – bright red – no mistaking it!

Sparrows are another dicey group to identify by species. Some are more obvious than others, such as the White-Crowned Sparrow and the Song Sparrow, with the telltale black spot on its breast, and a few others are distinguishable, but many aren’t, even to the expert eye.

GBBC will start next year. Right now, I’m doing Project Feederwatch, which goes through April of next year.

And I also try to do daily or near-daily regular bird counts for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology ebird checklist. I am a current member of the lab, and in 2002, I took their correspondence course in bird biology. Back then, I could still take it by regular mail. Now, it’s all completely online.
 
I’m sitting in the car ,parked waiting for family and it has taken me a little while to realise what the funny noise was from…the cleaning service is removing squashed insects from the front of the car…lots of common house sparrows 😄
When I drive home again the ducks and hens will do the same…they appreciate the protein !
 
I spent Christmas exploring a new part of the Oregon coast. I even bought myself my first pair of rubber boots for the occasion. There was a lot of water in the area. I ran into this most amazing flock of Townsend’s Warblers, Song, Foc, Golden-crowned and White-crowned Sparrows, Spotted Towhees, juncos and both kinglets feeding on a mat of organic material that was floating in a slow part of a creek where it went under a culvert. I’ve never experienced anything like it. Here’s a few photos.

Townsend’s Warblers

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Townsend’s Warbler with a Golden-crowned Sparrow in the background

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Golden-crowned Sparrows

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Song Sparrow

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Dark-eyed Juncos taking a bath

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So, we wind down 2019 with a countdown of the birds we’ve seen.

I end the year with 238 species identified.

My Arizona count stands at 180. Oregon was 86 and Montana was 78.

My only lifer was #510 for the Lower 48, a Ruddy Ground-dove.

I had 3 lifers in Arizona, 5 in Oregon and, 9 in my home state of Montana (I guess I wasn’t trying as a kid)

As I reflect back on the year and the birds that meant the most to me I have to remember the Red-breasted Nuthatches in my mother’s front yard that came to greet me as she lay dying inside from pancreatic cancer and the Varied Thrushes which I saw in Oregon over Christmas near our new place on the coast. These are birds from my youth, rarely seen, but which haunt the rain forests of the Pacific Northwest with there ethereal call. It meant a lot to reconnect with them, much less to take their photograph.

The nuthatch.

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And my old friend, the thrush. So happy to see you again.

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Happy New Year, and here’s your invitation to go birding with me in 2020. I’m going to start my own thread and give you all a bird by bird account of everything I see next year.

What are the possibilites?

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Happy New year Tad and fellow thread followers! I’m very much looking forward to more bird photos in 2020.
 
When hubby and I were in Hood River, Oregon, I saw one of those Varied Thrushes in somebody’s yard. Also, lots of crows and Western Scrub Jays. Here in north Idaho, we’re too far east to see the Varied Thrushes. We have Robins out here. And our jays are Stellers Jays and Canada Jays (the gray ones). They’re at my feeders often.
 
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