I am sick and the kids have been home from school due to the ice and snow for 3 days now. ARRRGGGHHH! So after almost staying at home and not going with them, I ventured out and we went to Spring Grove Cemetery in hopes of an outside chance at seeing crossbills. Well, I was hoping to see crossbills...the rest of the family just wanted to get out of the house. Less than 1 minute into the cemetery I saw a few birds flit into the top of a tall spruce and sure enough they were White-winged Crossbills!! A northern bird that is a lifer for me! I squeaked a little and ran from the car towards them leaving my family sitting in the running car thinking I was a moron. There was a flock of about 20-30 of them. I watched them for 10-15 minutes and they seemed to care less about the presence of kids running around in the snow beneath them or a fat guy staring at them with a binocular. Just before they all fly off they start to chatter like little kingfishers. There were also thousands of robins all over and a MERLIN perched at the top of a tree at the back of the cemetery. I didn't see too much else in my brief stop. What an amazing 30 minutes of birding!
Thursday, January 29, 2009
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Sweet!! Dr. Professor is jealous and headed that way on Saturday. Way to go!!
Forgot to initial my initial post. Har-har. -RAS
I see your Ross's Goose, Doctor Professor, and I raise you 25 White-winged Crossbills!
jealous. I raise ross's goose (amost trash bird around here) with Snowy Owl:)
C'mon! These are calls. You can't raise me with non-lifers. Now Brian OTOH... He's just been raised and re-raised. -RAS
tried to post earlier, but it didn't 'stick.' My point was, do you REALLY want to start
and to finish my thought...do you really want to start RAISING and CALLING on good birds? I can hear Malarkey now "Have I ever told you about the day I saw all 3 species of Jaegers?" Well, if you want to start E2...I call your WWCR, and raise you a Hook-billed Kite. Or wait, maybe a Snail Kite. No wait...
Tamaulipas pigmy owl! jb
oh, well if we're going outside of ABA boundaries, then 2 of the rarest endemics in Colombia (and the Americas) that I saw are Black Inca (hummingbird) and White-mantled Barbet...or should I go with the 4 endemics in Bogota that are extremely rare and not likely to be around much longer? Bogota Rail was the best of those...Ryan and Matt probably have a few good ones too. Not worried about Somershoe, he doesn't count!
We are not going outside of ABA and we don't give a damn what hands you all had in a different poker game. You can't call a full house from a hand of poker last year in a poker game tonight. we were talking about birds we saw a particular week not in our life from far away lands. I have been on the open ocean in Korea and in the jungles of Okinawa but you don't here me calling out Red-breasted double hung pheasant girl of desire bird....do you?
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