Chirps and Cheeps

Over the last week, I was able to grab a couple of hours on a couple of occasions and visited some different habitats with a nice variety of bird life and some first of year (FOY) sightings.

In a vineyard down near Fredonia, I did a little birding with Gale (did you ever read her wonderful blog, Photos by November Gale?). We both saw our FOY shorebirds: 6 Lesser Yellowlegs and another species that we never were able to identify. Later, Gale found some Pectoral Sandpipers to boot! Maybe those were what our mystery birds were too... A Chipping Sparrow was a FOY for both of us and we added 3 Eastern Phoebes, a Bald Eagle, a Pileated Woodpecker, and over 30 Tundra Swans to our list of 40 species for the day.

A day or two later, I stopped by Rich Marine with Willie and Betsy after visiting the Hawk Watch for a short while. We were hoping to see the Tufted Duck that had been found by Jim Pawlicki the day before, but no luck there. I did get to see my FOY Common Loon and Common Terns and then lingered a few more minutes to watch the Bonaparte Gulls dive for fish in the river.

There were probably close to a thousand bonies and the place was a frenzy of activity. Some of these small gulls are nearly into their full breeding plumage now and it's a real treat to see them looking so fine.  In addition to several Common Terns, a Little Gull was also out flying among the bonies, but unfortunately, I never could grab a photo of that beautiful bird. But I did enjoy taking a few photos of the gulls and terns in spite of the cold rain...