It is now officially 2013! Of course you probably have realized that by now, but I just wanted to remind you.
Last weekend was the backyard bird count. Every year the Delaware Dunlins do a trip called 'south to north', it starts at Indian river in the morning and goes all the way up to Bombay hook in late afternoon. This trip is one of my favorites and I have been looking forward to it all year, however this year it would be my favorite birding trip ever.
I am taking a Saturday morning Greek class at church, which doesn't end until 8:30 AM. So even though the trip starts at 9:00 all I missed was a few razorbills and a common eider (sarcasm).
Arriving at Indian River at around 9:30, we were met by someone from the trip coming up from the beach to tell everyone that a red crossbill had been spotted!
These birds are extremely rare in Delaware, even in winter, and usually don't come any farther south than Canada, so I am extremely glad that I was able to add one to my life list.
It was perched in a small pine tree one one of the dunes, and stayed there for the rest of our time at that location. We saw several other birds that are rather common around there in the winter (long-tailed duck, double-crested cormorant, black and surf scoters) and a harp seal, then we all got back in our cars and drove to the other side of the bridge where we saw a large flock of about fifty snow buntings!
Although these are fairly common in the winter, I had never seen one before, so they were life bird #2 for the day!
We then went about a mile away to the Indian river marina, where I saw two more life birds, Horned and eared grebe!
The horned grebe is also common in the winter, but the eared lives much farther west and has only been seen a few times in Delaware.
We left Indian river at around 10:30, and I had already seen 4 life birds and would see more by the time we went home that afternoon.
The next stop was Silver lake in Rehoboth, and although it was not a life bird, we saw a gray catbird which are uncommon in the winter.
At around 11:30 we left silver lake and went to the Cape Henlopen state park nature center alone while everyone else got some lunch (we had packed ours that morning and ate on the way), where I saw many interesting birds including two more for my life list: Fox sparrow and Red-breasted nuthatch!
While there I also saw two bald eagles fighting over a fish, calling quite loudly as they did so.
Everyone else arrived some time later, and the fox sparrow came out again for them.
leaving the nature center we drove a little ways to the hawk watch platform, it was now raining and snowing at the same time, and seeing nothing, other than one lone merganser, Rock, Daddy and I decided to go over and climb one of the several towers in the park from World War II.
At the top, the wind was blowing hard, and it was snowing.
climbing down after about five minutes we decided to leave, and went to prime hook, unfortunately the rest of the birders went to prime hook road and we went to the prime hook nature center. But we actually saw more birds including a great egret which although not a life bird (they're everywhere in the summer) is rare in winter, spending most of their time in Florida and the Caribbean. I also saw some Northern shovelers and green-winged teal (both life birds).
Catching everyone else we were surprised to see a young great blue heron, about a yard away from the road catching snails, and completely ignoring us. We sat there for several minutes, and Rock took some wonderful pictures and video. We saw a few things that I had already seen there, then moved on to Bombay hook.
Coming up the road to the entrance the other car stopped, looking around I didn't see anything but snow geese and a few starlings flying overhead. Someone came back to our car and explained that they had seen horned larks. This was kind of a life bird, but I had seen and heard them before, including at last years trip, where someone had said they were meadowlarks. So although I had seen them from a distance I always had assumed that they were meadowlarks.
We saw a few other rare species (according to ebird, even though I think that American avocets are common during the winter). Then just as we were about to announce that we were leaving, everyone stopped. Getting out of the car I heard that there was an eastern screech-owl in a nest box next to the road, poking his head out so that we could see him. We stood, watching for several minutes until he pulled his head into the box and disappeared.
In all we had seen over seventy species including seven or eight life birds. We had started with a Red crossbill, and ended with an Eastern Screech-owl. It was the most memorable birding trip I have ever gone on.
I will hopefully edit this post soon to include a list of species but I don't really feel like typing 74+ species of birds at the moment