183

Species of birds seen so far this year in our county...not all by me, alas, although we do keep looking. That surpasses the entire count for last year, which was 182, surely proving that our area sees a lot of serious birding. At the end of last year I had personally seen 152 species; this year I have been stuck at 150 since the 28th of May.

I fail at warblers....can't get out to walk where they are, don't know enough of their songs when I do manage to do so. We get lucky finding the oddballs though, that early season Golden Eagle, Great Egrets on three occasions, and a Common Gallinule that only showed up once, even though we have been back to the pond any number of times.

What a year for Wood Ducks though. We have seen two broods of ducklings in county, and yesterday in Schoharie County we saw three broods in one pond, with a large number of unrelated adults hanging around too. Nice!

Turtles by the ton are being seen as well. So many snappers and Eastern Painted Turtles laying eggs on roadsides and in parks, as to keep half the raccoons on earth well fed and still produce lots of baby turtles for next year.

I love how stoic the big snappers are when laying eggs. We don't disturb them if we can help it, but they don't seem to care who or what goes near them when they are busy on their nests.