Damon's New Year in Cape May, Part 2 (Two Mile Beach to Stone Harbor)

New Years in Cape May happened. I previously wrote about the morning section of the day with a count of 62 birds. How many more birds could I get? Would I get anything to top the Painted Bunting and White-winged Dove? Could I keep up the pace of Paul in Texas? Was the day awesome?

Well, the day certainly was awesome, and as I finished my lunch of Wawa Italian Hoagie and sliced apples and let my phone charge some more I scanned over the dunes of Two Mile Beach, even though it was only Yellow-rumped Warblers around. But I knew some things we were going to see because others in the parking lot had already let out that there was a Snowy Owl just down the beach.

Damon's New Year in Cape May, Part 1 (Trip down and Cape May Point)

I knew that Paul was going to start his new year in South Texas. Damn, that's hardcore birding. Really, if you think about it, where would else you want to start your bird list? There are few other choices; maybe South Florida or Arizona? It was a power birding move, well disguised as "being invited to present at a symposium", and one that would lead to Paul having dozens of birds that neither he nor I would otherwise have any chance of getting. How could I even hope of competing against that? I had no other choice.

Cape May.

Oregon Birding III: Malheur National Wildlife Refuge

It was our second day of birding in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge (MNWR) and I wanted to get a good early start, so my Dad and I took a morning walk through the town of Frenchglen. We saw many of the same birds from the day before (crows, blackbirds and swallows galore), but on the way back to the hotel I noticed a smallish, robinish bird bobbing its tail in a juniper tree. This was odd and so I investigated it further to find a Say's Phoebe (1) and, soon after that, I saw Common Nighthawks (2) circling through town. I watched one for a while and it landed in a tree.

Common Nighthawk taking a break

Oregon Birding II: Trip to Frenchglen

Once when I was in high school, we took a biology class field trip out to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge (MNWR). We were told that there were lots of birds around, but beyond that I don't remember much from our trip there. Mostly it was a good excuse to get out of class for a day.

I do remember that there are supposed to be a lot of birds there, so, while I was on my trip to Eastern Oregon, I strongly hinted to my parents that it would be fun to take a trip down to MNWR for a day to see what birds we could scare up. They were amendable to this idea and even booked a hotel room for us in the little town (population of a few dozen maybe) of Frenchglen. We headed down on Wednesday morning with the plan of looking for birds on the way, staying the night and then driving to MNWR proper the next morning.

Damon vs. Paul, a Head to Head Birding Day Matchup, part 1: Memorial Day Sunday

How was the birding this past weekend? It wasn't quite as good as when migration was in full swing a few weeks ago, but all in all Damon and I both had pretty good birding days on Saturday (May 25). He reportedly saw an American Oystercatcher being eaten by a Swallow-Tailed Kite. I asked for photos but all I heard about was a "malfunctioning memory card". Anyways, we both saw a good sampling of birds in our respective regions (Damon- the greater Philadelphia region, but Saturday was mostly southern New Jersey; Me- eastern Toronto and Peterborough) on that day. I thought it might be interesting to compare our lists to see which birds were found in both places and what each of us saw that the other didn't.

A Philly Area Big Day: A Test Run

I don’t really have a Big Day in me quite yet. Don’t get me wrong, I have the energy and absolutely have the desire, but I just don’t have the time. Yet. So until then I will just casually write down the birds I see during a whole day without going out of my way to make it a big day.

Hey, that actually fits within the whole idea behind this blog! We are casually counting birds for the year without going out of our way, and my ‘big day’ is me casually counting the birds for the day without going out of my way. That’ll work!

An Ontario Big Day: Test Run

It is starting to warm up here and more birds seem to be arriving daily. The boys and I took advantage of the nice weather to go birding around Peterborough and decided it would be a good day to test our Big Day capabilities. How many bird species could we see in a day of April birding in Peterborough? The kids were ok with leaving early (before 7 a.m.) and first thing we headed south. We then worked our way north and returned to Peterborough around noon. After lunch, we drove north and made it home mid-afternoon.

Here is a quick summary of some of the highlights of our trip of nearly 200 km: