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| Life photo, Common Murre |
The main reason I have seen more species, is there are more species to see. Last year, 143 species were seen in January. This year there has been 153. Many of the end of the year birds have stuck around. Even though I have seen fifteen more birds than the first month of last year, I am a cellar dweller in the standings. I am 8th out of fourteen but I had Thurs/Fri off and most people will have the weekend off. I have been hovering around tenth or eleventh and probably will again by Monday.
Enough about stats. I had a really fun two days. I birded twenty two hours over two days and that doesn't include my hour drive each way, each day. I went to over a dozen hotspots, and really just enjoyed myself.
I had two goals for my days off. I wanted to see the Tufted Duck, and because I was within reach, I wanted to reach 125 species. I needed seven. I had plans for Friday to take the Block Island Ferry with my friend Jan but other than that I mostly birded alone.
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| Tufted Duck |
Even though I saw a lot of birds last year, I didn't see all of the waterfowl in the state. I missed one, Tundra Swans. I thought for sure they would show up but they never showed n the mainland. We found out later that Tundra Swans did show up on Block Island, so on January 2 a bunch of us went to the island to see them. Since then, the waterfowl have been spectacular. All of the rare geese showed up and most of the ducks. By January 15 I had every species that comes to Rhode Island except three. I still needed Wood Duck (very easy in warm weather), Blue Winged Teal (which will migrate through in early spring) and Tufted Duck. Tufted Duck is one of those rare birds that shows up once or twice a year. There isn't any one hotspot so you never know where they will be. The god news is, when one shows up, it usually sticks around. One was found last week and yesterday was my first chance to see it. Luckily, it took very little effort to see it.
Getting that out of the way, I birded multiple spots, sometimes multiple times. I got five new birds yesterday. I also had many other fun birds even if I had already seen them.
Today Jan and I took the ferry. There were a possible six species out there, but three would require real luck. Long story short, we saw two. I got my first lifer of the year in Thick Billed Murre and I got a Life photo f Common Murre. Jan needed the Thick Billed. Although we didn't see a lot of birds, we were happy with the ones we got.
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| Glaucous Gull |
Later in the day I saw the Glaucous Gull at First Beach. Again, this is another rare bird, sometimes not seen in a given year. So it was utterly ridiculous how easy the photos were. I stood twenty feet from it with the sun at my back.
There were many stops after the ferry before and after the gull, but I won't bore you. My last stop was actually my first Thursday morning also. I had tried while it was still dark out for Great Horned Owl in Tiverton but struck out. However, tonight the owl was hooting. This gave me a total of 125 for January!
I still can't believe I'm saying it, but January was fun. Multiple photos from today below.
Note- I originally thought I had Wood Duck, but another birder got a photo of its leg and it has a band. It is most likely an escapee so I took it off f my list. Still happy with the photos though
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| American Crow is my favorite common bird |
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| Northern Mockingbird |
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| This photo and the two below are of the Glaucous Gull |
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| Wood Duck |
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