Saturday, January 3, 2009

January 3, 2009


Today I went out thinking that I'd knock out as many waterfowl as I could. Well, I didn't even get out the door before I found a duck that I thought I was going to have to work to get on my list. I was checking out Pond 1 from the visitors center at the Henderson Bird Viewing Preserve just after it got light when I noticed a male blue-winged teal (above, center). He was feeding with a larger group of green-winged teal and remained on the pond throughout the day.

My first bird of the day and first bird of the year at the HBVP was a northern shoveler (no big surprise there, there are hundreds of them). At about this same time I could hear coyotes yipping and howling on the back pond; it sounded like there were at least three of them. During the day I found 37 "new" species. My last bird of the day was one of my favorites, a black phoebe. The bird I missed while I was out birding was a Wilson's snipe, seen from the visitors center's window!

2 comments:

Mom said...

Gorgeous picture of the bc night heron.

Tiffany said...

That's actually a gb heron. It was a really cold windy day and he was standing all hunched up and miserable on that little island.