Sharon and Jacques’ Excellent Blog

The spring migration is picking up. After the sweltering heat of Saturday (31C), it dropped down to a drizzly 9C on Sunday, excellent birding weather. I went hawk watching on Saturday and managed to miss the big broadwing migration on Friday. Colin, a fellow hawkwatcher, set a new personal record for Beamer with over 8,000 birds. Various other people described it as the finest migration day they had seen at Beamer ever. Saturday, of course, was very average. The upflight of broadwings was good and mixed in where 9 other raptor species but the winds were very strong pushing the flight line away from where I was taking picture. Despite that, I managed to get a few good shots of an American Kestrel and Broadwing Hawk that flew straight at me onto the 3rd lookout. In the area I also managed to find several Upland Sandpipers and was taking pictures of them from my car.

Current Album: 0425 Beamer Pt and Area Birding
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I left Beamer around noon and headed down to Col Sam Smith Park to see if could find any warblers. I had mixed luck but did manage a few passable shots mostly of waterfowl.

Current Album: 0425 Col Sam Smith Birding
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Sunday was cold and rainy. I started first at Lakeside Park looking for the prarie warbler that was reported. Didn’t find it but did manage to find lots of warblers (black and white, yellow-rumped, black-throated green, blue-headed vireo) and several Baltimore orioles. I left and went to Sam Smith. The bowl was empty much to my surprise. I walked down the line of trees and started finding lots of warblers (black and white, black-throated green, Nashville, palm, pine, yellow-rumped) streaming through the trees. Mixed in with them were blue-headed vireo and warbling vireo. On the ground were white-throated sparrows, eastern towhee, brown thrasher and hermit thrushes. A pileated woodpecker landed in a tree next to me (the camera, of course, was in the car) and provided some great views. The best view of the day was a coopers hawk chasing a turkey vulture around the playing field and landing on its back. This went on for some 10 minutes before the turkey vulture took off.

Current Album: 0426 Col Sam Smith Birding
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Two day total from Sat and Sun was 88 species which is a great start to the season.