Good Day Eh !
Another beautiful day to be out birding for we birders of leisure and another day of changes and surprises and I was again privileged to bird with Margaret Liubavicius and Ian Cannell and again we had The Islands to ourselves as far as birders go.
Following are some of the 79 species we found.
Pied-billed Grebe, Long-tailed Duck, Great Egret, 7 raptor species including Osprey, Sharp-shined and Cooper's Hawks, Merlin and Peregrine Falcons, 25+ Common Terns, Black-billed Cuckoo, 7 Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, Belted Kingfishers, 8 Flycatcher species including 10 Eastern Wood Pewees, 16 Yellow-bellied Flycatchers, 21 Least flycatchers, Eastern Phoebes, and 7 Great-crested Flycatchers, 3 Philadelphia, 9 Warbling and 31 red-eyed Vireos, Veerys, Swainson's Thrushes, 12 Gray Catbirds, 11 Blue-gray Gnatcatchers, 22 warbler species including Golden-winged, Tennessee (2 Orange-crowned Tennessees Ron), 59 Magnolia, 11 Black-throated blue, 74 Yellow-rumped, 12 Black-throated green, 2 early Palm, 9 Blackpoll, 11 Black-and-white, 53 American Redstarts, only 9 Northern Waterthrushes, 2 Connecticut, 1 Mourning, 14 Wilson's and 5 Canada Warblers, and 20 Baltimore Orioles.
We know that we probably undercounted a lot of the Flycatchers, Vireos, and Warblers but with the heavy leaf cover it sometimes is hard to see some birds and they are constantly on the move.
There are still more bird filled days to come and soon the Thrushes, Tanagers, Kinglets, and later migrating Warblers will be on the move and of course Raptors will soon be moving through also in numbers, especially Sharp-shined Hawks and American Kestrels.
