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| Greater Yellowlegs |
I am. Point me at the outdoors and hand me my binoculars. We ran down to the river today to celebrate getting the taxes paid. (Thanks for all the help....you know who you are).
We saw the most amazing birds! Yankee Hill Lock and Schoharie Crossing SHS at the boat launch are exciting places for good birds. We saw Pectoral Sandpipers a week or so ago at the latter but today, just wow.
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| Black-bellied Plover |
First we spotted a little white sandpiper-ish thing hanging around with some Yellowlegs. I thought (and hoped) it was a Black-bellied Plover and the experts agreed.
Then when we came home I looked at some photos of the Yellowlegs, which I had thought were all Greaters, and thought we had a Lesser. Experts agreed.
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| Lesser Yellowlegs |
Next came some odd little black ducks at Yankee Hill Lock. Folks have been seeing Surf Scoters up in Saratoga Lake for the past week or so and I really wanted to see some over here...just one county away...but I didn't expect to.
These birds were all the way across the river, the light was poor, and they were almost the color of the water. Couldn't see them at all without the binoculars; I had to photograph them by finding landmarks nearby and taking photos of those....just hoping the birds were in the frame.
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| Hopefully Surf Scoters (in front of the Canadas) |
After much discussion the good folks at What's this Bird mostly agreed that we had indeed found Surf Scoters, lifers for me, and rare birds here, according to eBird. There is still some discussion that they may be White-winged Scoters as some were seen here about five days ago. Whichever, they were pretty cool. Guess we will see what the eBird reviewer thinks.
What a tremendous amount of fun we had, what with worrying about taxes off our minds. The best part from my point of view was that I got them right...or kinda sorta right...or I at least had the right answers among the birds I was considering, and hoping against hope that my wildest guesses were the correct ones.
What a day!
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5 comments:
" Surf Scoters" Wow!!! Good job!
Cathy, they haven't been approved yet, but I am hoping. The Black-bellied Plover made the state rare birds alert and other birders went to chase it so that was pretty cool. I feel so handicapped in that respect, not being conventionally educated. I take a terrible spanking from the big birders who see my posts on What's this Bird looking for confirmation of my ID. Don't trust myself to call rarities! And if I just list them on eBird and get them wrong I get a spanking there. Ah, well, we have a tremendous amount of fun, and find good birds even if I put call them sandpipers when they are members of another family.
Gosh...Surf Scoters how cool that is!
Although I'm a plant nerd instead of a birder (mostly because of bad eyesight), I do understand the glee one feels when sighting a rare species. Good for you!
Linda, the best part is two serious birders came down from western NY yesterday to look for the plover and happened to meet us as we birded too. They definitely IDed the scoters and even gave me a peek at them through their spotting scope.
Jacqueline, great fun! I often think of you when looking at wild plants, knowing that you would know what they were right away and I just....dont...
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