Western Spindalis and Nanday Parakeet

We were on the road as planned by 5:30 AM to make the 125 mile drive down to Key West from Florida City.  We hit no major slowdowns at that early hour, and arrived at the Key West Botanical Garden on Stock Key right at 8 AM to find out that it did not open until 10 AM--bummer.  We headed into Key West and worked our way out to a beach area where we had several magnificent frigatebirds gliding overhead.  We made a short stop at Goldman's for breakfast--eggs and bagels for Dan and myself, and soup for Doreene.

We were back at the botanical garden at 10 sharp to look for a female western spindalis that has been hanging out there for several weeks.  We were told when we entered where to look for the bird, and proceeded to canvas that part of what is a not very big area.  We found very few birds again.  Later we checked out the small water area where we found black and white, and palm warblers, and both waterthrushes, plus moscovy ducks which are now countable in Florida.

Mid day we met a family of 3 from Oregon who was making their first visit to Florida.  We explained that we were looking for a rare vagrant.  A bit later when we were looking in another area, the wife came running up to us to say she thought her son might have found the bird.  We rushed over to discover that he had found 2 red-eyed vireos but not the spindalis.

About 2 PM we were beginning to wonder if we were going to strike out on the spindalis when another birder and her husband from Rhode Island told us about a sighting of the spindalis late on the day before over by the parking area.  We all went over there to find that a large fig tree had ripening figs on it, plus right next to it was a covered area with chairs.  We settled in hoping that the spindalis would come in to feed.  About 3:30 the young couple from Atlanta who had seen the spindalis on Wednesday came by, and told us more about seeing it.  While with us, they both heard it call.  We looked for it but could not locate it.  They had to leave, and the garden was about to close for the day.  We asked the volunteer who came to move us out about our predicament, and he graciously gave us a few more minutes to look.

Finally, at 4:30 he returned to say he really did need to lock up the gate.  The couple from Rhode Island drove off planning to return at 10 the next morning.  We pulled our car out of the parking area, and got out to listen some more while the gate was being closed.  Doreene heard a chip call, and low and behold, there was the spindalis right by the gate eating a holly berry.  We were able to get some nice looks at it, and I also got a "record" shot just below (click on any photo to enlarge).

We felt incredibly fortunate to have seen the bird at literally the last second since we were not staying in Key West for the night.  We climbed into my car for the long drive back north.  We stopped in Key Largo for a very nice seafood dinner, and then drove on up to Boca Raton to be in position to bird in that area the next morning.  As we were getting out of the car at our motel, Doreene realized that she had left her purse on a chair at the restaurant in Key Largo.  She called and found out they had it.  She would need it to have ID to fly home on Saturday, so we knew we would be driving back to Key Largo in the morning.

We were up early so that we could bird at Wakodahatchee wetlands before making the 100+ mile drive back to Key Largo.  Our last target bird, Nanday parakeet, also called black-hooded parakeet, had been recently reported from the wetlands, so we were hoping to find a few there.  We talked to one of the locals who said there had been a few 2 weeks earlier, but they had left the area.  We still had a nice hour of birding on the boardwalk, and then headed back to get the purse.  We picked it up just before 11 AM, and then drove to Florida City to have lunch at one of my favorite tacquerias, and to get a key lime shake from Robert's fruit stand.

Since we still needed to find Nanday parakeets, we decided after lunch to drive up to the St. Petersburg area where there are large numbers of them.  We were over 100 miles west of Miami when Doreene checked NARBA to find that a Bahama mockingbird, another rare vagrant, had been found that morning at the same spot as the thick-billed vireo we had seen on Wednesday.  It was mid afternoon, and we decided that we needed to keep going to St. Pete to get the parakeet because the traffic would be awful by the time we made it back to Miami.  We also needed to make a short stop in Venice to visit an old friend of Doreene's that was expecting us.

After winding our way thru town, we made it to Walter Fuller Park about 6:30, and were delighted to find a few Nanday parakeets flying about, and eating in the grass.  Dan got a very nice shot of one.  Since Dan and Doreene were flying out of Orlando the next morning, we made the 2 hour drive on up to the airport area to spend the night.  Before going to bed, I needed to decide whether I would get up very early and drive back to Miami to try for the Bahama mockingbird.  Stay tuned!

Thick-billed Vireo

We were up early on Wednesday morning to make the drive from Coral Gables to Key Biscayne.  Even though we started on Old Cutler Rd. to try to avoid the rush hour traffic on Route #1, we still found the going very slow because of all the schools along the road.  Once we were back on Route #1 it was even worse.  We had left our motel at 7:15 thinking we could make it to Bill Baggs by 8 AM.  We finally arrived there about 8:30.  We went straight to where a thick-billed vireo has been seen regularly for over a month. 

There were very few birds about except for the occasional cardinal or catbird.  We kept listening for its call, and then Doreene thought she picked it up.  We kept listening and soon the vireo appeared about 40 feet away from us in a bushy plant.  We watched it for about 5 minutes before it moved out of sight.  We continued to hear it calling off and on for the next 15-20 minutes, but it never came out in the open again.  I could not get any photos, but I have added the photo above taken by Todd McGrath, a birder I know (click on any photo to enlarge).  I will explain in a following post how I knew that Todd had a photo of this bird.  We also enjoyed finding one of the many types of iguanas found in Florida.

About 10 AM we decided to leave Bill Baggs and made our way down to Florida City which is near Everglades NP.  We stopped enroute to try out the Pollo Tropical chicken which proved to be very tasty.  This is one of the chains you can find now in southern California, southern Texas and southern Florida that specializes in marinating chicken with a fruit juice based marinade, and then grilling it.  I am assuming that this concept comes out of Mexico and has taken hold in these areas.

We checked into our motel and took a short break before driving to Everglades NP.  We visited the Anhinga Trail first and were surprised at how few birds we found.  Those that were still in the area were very cooperative.

There was no shortage of alligators.

We next stopped at Mahogany Hammock to stroll the boardwalk.  It also was mostly birdless other than 3 migrant warblers (black-throated green, black and white, and parula), 2 great-crested flycatchers, and a lovely breeding plumage red-bellied woodpecker.

We headed on down to Flamingo to see what might be around.  At Eco Pond we found several painted buntings, 2 orchard orioles and lots of catbirds.  The tide was high, so no chance for shorebirds.  We drove back to Florida City to eat dinner and get to bed early to be ready to start out the next morning at 5:30 to make the drive to Key West to look for a western spindalis.  Stay tuned!

White-cheeked Pintail and Purple Swamphen

I was on the road at 6 AM sharp on Monday 4/8.  I had to drive 650 miles to Orlando, FL to pick up my birding friends, Dan and Doreene, who were flying there from Columbus, OH.  The week before a spotted redshank was found in Indiana.  They were able to get over to see it, but it left before I could make the drive to try to find it.  Since I missed it, I had called Dan and Doreene to see if they had any interest in birding in Florida to try to pick up 3 rare vagrants there as well as 2 exotics--Nanday parakeet and purple swamphen--that recently have been added to the ABA bird list.  They said yes, thus my meeting them in Orlando.

I arrived at 3:30 PM and we immediately drove another 100 miles to Pelican Island NWR which was established in 1903 as the very first national wildlife refuge.  We visited it because for several weeks a white-cheeked pintail had been feeding in the Centennial Trail pond.  I had seen a white-cheeked pintail in North Carolina during my big year in October of 2010, but the NC bird review committee had not accepted it as being a wild bird.  This one in Florida was my next chance to add it to my ABA life list. 

We arrived about 5:30 to find David Crockett, a birder from Estes Park, CO who also lives in Florida in the winter, patiently waiting to see the pintail.  He had been there all day, but the duck had not made an appearance.  Without success, we all stuck it out until dusk when the refuge was closing.

The next morning we all returned after spending the night in Vero Beach.  Dan, Doreene and I some how survived without any after affects a very bad chinese buffet meal the night before.  It was a fine sunny morning with some clouds to keep us cool.  The local volunteer crew of seniors was working on the butterfly garden while we kept scanning the pond.  About 10 AM I noticed a group of blue-winged teal had appeared near a small island.  I mentioned it, and immediately Dan found the pintail feeding in with them.  We all got to watch it for at most 10 minutes before it disappeared behind the island.  It was too far out for my camera, but my friend Bob Wallace was able to send me a shot of it he took earlier this year (click on photo to enlarge).

Since the pintail was out of sight, and we had spent a total of almost 5 hours over 2 days waiting for it to appear, we decided it was time to seek out another one of the 5 target birds we hoped to find while in Florida.  We headed south towards Lake Okeechobee to search for purple swamphens.  This was another bird that I saw in March of 2010, and now that it had been added to the ABA list, we all needed to see it again.

We tried a couple of spots based on e bird reports--the electronic system used by many birders to provide sightings that can be accessed by other birders.  We were unsuccessful, so we drove another hour to STA 5 which stands for storm water treatment area #5.  I had seen the swamphen here in 2010.  There were lots of common moorhens, and 1 purple gallinule, but no swamphens.  We also did not find any snail kites which I also had seen there during my big year.  In general it seemed that bird numbers were down from my visit to STA 5 in 2010.

We climbed back into my car about 5:30, and had just enough time to drive to the Pembroke Pines area where the purple swamphen first was introduced in Florida.  We visited the Chapel Trail Nature Preserve.  As we entered we found 2 other birders leaving who said a swamphen was right by the boardwalk.  We rushed out to find that a pair was close by (photo above taken by Dan Sanders).  We found a 2nd pair as well.

With dusk upon us, we decided to make the drive down to Miami to spend the night to be in position to visit Bill Baggs SP early on Wednesday morning.  Our target bird was the thick-billed vireo.  Stay tuned!

Hooded Crane Update

One of the biggest birding stories that began back in late 2011 was the discovery of a hooded crane at Hiwassee wildlife refuge located northwest of Chattanooga, TN.  The bird stayed several weeks at Hiwassee with the 1000's of sandhill cranes that come there every winter.  When the sandhill cranes began migrating back north in 2012, the hooded crane left with them, and was recorded at one more place in Indiana.

Birders from all over the U.S. came to Hiwassee to see this beautiful bird in hopes that it would eventually be accepted as a wild bird, and thus a first North American record for the species. I first wrote about the hooded crane on 12/18/11 in this blog when I had just returned from seeing it.  Both photos were taken by Doug Koch (click on any photo to enlarge).  I believe it is obvious which bird is the hooded crane.

The debate began almost immediately within the birding community about the crane's provenance.  Given that its normal breeding territory is in Siberia, and most of the 10,000 hooded crane population winters in Japan, there was great skepticism about it being a wild bird.  As a result, the bird review committees in both Indiana and Tennessee spent a year researching whether it could have been a wild bird rather than an escapee.

There are almost no hooded cranes in captivity in the U.S.  After finding that all known captive hooded cranes were accounted for, and studying the possibility that this hooded crane had migrated in the fall of 2011 from Siberia to the U.S. with the sandhill cranes, both the Indiana (6-1 vote) and the Tennessee (5-1 vote) state bird review committees have now accepted the hooded crane as being wild.  The next step is for the ABA to review the "evidence", and make a decision about whether to add the hooded crane to the ABA bird list.

I am going to be birding in Florida next week, and will be reporting about my time there.  Stay tuned!

Black-tailed Godwit--Yes; Fieldfare--No

There continue to be some very rare vagrants in the ABA area this year.  I have written about the many northern lapwings along the east coast.  British Columbia has had all winter a citrine wagtail, and for the past month a red-flanked bluetail.  A not quite so rare vagrant, a black-tailed godwit, was found last fall at Chincoteague NWR in Virginia by Bob Ake who did a full ABA big year in 2010.  We got to know each other that year when our paths would cross while I was doing my lower 48 big year.  About 2 weeks ago a black-tailed godwit was found again at Chincoteague.  It is most likely the same bird from last fall.
 
 I had a trip planned beginning Monday the 25th to drive up thru Washington, DC on my way to New York City and Boston.  I thought about waiting to try for the godwit, but since it was only a 5 hour drive each way to Chincoteague from Chapel Hill, I decided to not risk missing the bird by waiting.  So on Thursday the 21st, I got up at 3 AM to make the drive up.  It was a cold morning, but the weather was pretty good even though snow was in the forecast.  I arrived at the visitor center at Tom's Cove about 8:30 AM.  A couple from Colorado was already there, Rick Anderson and his wife.  The black-tailed godwit had been seen regularly with a group of marbled godwits, but when I arrived there were no godwits in sight.

The ranger in the visitor center said that a bald eagle had flushed the godwit group about 7:30.  So we all just had to be patient for the birds to return.  While scanning the area, I did see 2 piping plovers. As the morning progressed, several more birders arrived, and about 11 AM suddenly the godwit group appeared and began feeding close to the visitor center.  As a result, everyone got very good looks at the black-tailed in conjunction with the marbled.  It was quite windy and cold, and my photos ended up being record shots.  Fortunately, Rick emailed me good photos that he had taken (click on any photo to enlarge). I did clearly see its black tail band and white underwings when it flew. I was pretty happy to finally see this black-tailed since now I have seen all 4 godwit species that come into the ABA area.  I was back home by late afternoon.

I did make the road trip starting on Monday the 25th getting into Boston very late that evening.  A fieldfare was found in Carlisle, a town to the northwest of Boston, and very near Lincoln, MA where I have good friends.  The last fieldfare sighting in the ABA area was in February of 2011 far out on the Gaspe peninsula of Quebec.  I was going to see that bird with my friends Dan and Doreene, but at the last minute I had to cancel joining them.  They flew from Ohio to Manchester, NH, and then drove 15 hours one way to see the fieldfare which had been feeding on crab apples in a person's backyard. 

I made the short drive Tuesday morning to the area in which this fieldfare was being seen.  I arrived about 7 AM and soon after a birder from Colorado pulled up.  We spent the rest of the day walking between 3 locations.  The first was where the fieldfare had last been seen with a flock of robins.  The second was about a 1/2 mile away where the robins and fieldfare had first been seen beginning on Sunday the 17th.  The 3rd was about a 1/4 mile in the other direction--the only place nearby that we could find any robins at all.

A few other birders came by during the day including Christian Gras, a french man who now lives in the Boston area.  While looking at the robins we had the good fortune to have a northern shrike appear (photo taken by Christian).  Northern shrikes are not nearly as rare as a fieldfare since they visit MA each winter, but only in very small numbers.  Nevertheless, it turned out to be my consolation prize since by 4 PM we had not found the fieldfare.

The plot line on the fieldfare is as follows.  It was first found feeding on berries along the edge of a field.  After a few days it snowed, covering up the fields, so the robins and fieldfare relocated to a yard that had a few barberry bushes to feed upon.  The flock was seen working up and down Maple St., and regularly coming to the barberry bushes.  On Sat. and Sun of last weekend, there were as many as 100 birders each day looking for the fieldfare.  It was last seen mid day on Sat., and not seen again after the snow melted enough for the flock to be able to find other food sources.  The flock was probably not far away from the Maple St. barberry bushes, but no one had been able to relocate the birds.  As of today, the 30th, the fieldfare has still not been found again.

I am back home now.  My next bird trip is to southern California at the end of April.  Stay tuned!

Falco Grillaio in Matera, Italy

I have just returned from 2 very good weeks traveling in Italy.   Since it was not yet tourist season, everywhere we went we enjoyed the lack of crowds, especially in Forence. The first week was spent with my wife, CKay: our daughter, Jess: and our son, Caleb, and his fiancee, Jackie.We took a car trip from Rome down to Puglia and Basilicata--a part of Italy that we have never visited before.

The first 2 nights we stayed in the seaside town of Maratea.  We did not arrive at our hotel until midnite, and then Caleb suggested we open a bottle of wine.  We lifted our glasses to toast the beginning of our trip together to discover it was a pretense to announce that he had proposed to Jackie 2 days earlier on top of the Duomo in Florence.  She showed us the ring that was made for her by a friend of Caleb's.  It made for a dramatic beginning to our family trip.

We had stunning views of the Tyrrhenian Sea from our hotel.  We hiked further up into the hills for even more panoramic looks, and also walked along a black sand beach for a bit including a quick dip into the sea by our son.  We had wanted to eat at one of the area's premier restaurants--Taverna Rovita--but it unfortunately was still closed for the winter.  Instead we stopped at a little place recommended by a local where we were the only people having dinner.  It proved to be quite simple but very good.  The pastas were all quite nice, and the highlight was the perfectly grilled spigola.

On day 3 we made the drive from Maratea to Lecce with a stop in Martina Franca to eat at La Tana.  We arrived about 12:30 and proceeded to thoroughly enjoy ourselves for the next  2 plus hours. There were many delightful dishes consumed including a puree of fava beans with grilled peppers and sauteed greens; a handmade ravioli called nocche stuffed with smoky scamorza cheese; a salt crusted branzino; and the capper was the maialino cooked with prunes and finished in the oven with a pastry crust topping.

After the richness of the pork dish that we all shared, we managed to finish up the meal with the best rendition of a chocolate lava cake that I have ever had.  The wine of the day was a blend of negro amaro and sangiovese from the 2003 vintage.

We then drove on to Lecce where we spent the next 2 nights.  Other than a very fine wine bar, and some of the best Napoli style pizza I have eaten, our food experience was sub par for Italy while staying in Lecce.  It also rained most of the full day we had to walk the old town.  As a result, on day 5 after a nice sunny hour spent at a beach just north of Brindisi, we stopped at La Tana again for lunch on our way to Matera.  The meal was just as good as our first visit with CKay's dish of astice in a tomato sauce with tagliolini being the stand out.

We especially wanted to visit Matera because of the unusual history of the city.  It is located along a large gorge with a river at the bottom.  Hundreds of natural caves dot the cliff sides where for centuries people have lived in the caves.  In one of the smaller side ravines over time the caves have been built into homes using masonry to augment the cave space.  The room we stayed in at Locanda San Martino was part natural rock and part masonry.  Walking thru the town/city including down into the gorge was how we spent most of a bright sunny day 6.  While checking out the buildings, I noticed signs that explained how by making nest sites on top of the buildings, the city had helped the lesser kestrel--falco grillaio--recover from a sharp decline in numbers.  It was fun to see many of them flying around over the city being harassed by jackdaws.

We were made an early start on day 7 in order to be back in Rome in time for Jackie to catch her flight home to NYC.  The rest of us caught the train to Florence to visit friends, and old haunts we have come to love after living in the city for a year back in 2003-4.  Caleb and Jess were with us for a couple of days before they took off for Amsterdam and Berlin.

One of our favorite spots is Fuori Porta, a wine bar just outside one of the huge wooden gates of the wall around Florence.  CKay always orders the buratta and veggies plate at Fuori Porta. We ate 2 lunches there this trip, and one day I stopped at the market to pick up vongole veraci so that the chef could make us clams with spaghetti for our lunch that we shared with 2 Italian friends--Giulia and Elena.  Giulia had a baby boy, Anea, last November, so we were glad to be able to meet him.

The final destination for this trip was our first ever visit to the Piemonte area where barolo and barbaresco wines are made.  We took the train up to Milan where we picked up a rental car to make the 200 KM drive to Annunziata in the heart of the wine region.  We stayed at Cascina del Monastero--a winery/agriturismo owned by the same family since 1926.  Velda was our hostess, and she made our visit most enjoyable.  Our experience of traveling in Italy is that the Italians rarely eat a big breakfast opting for a small pastry and cappuccino.  Velda made a huge spread for us each morning including several local cheeses, sliced meats, yogurt, homemade croissants, juice, coffee, tea and eggs to order.  As a result, we skipped lunch and opted for a big dinner at a local restaurant.

Our first night we went up the hill to eat at Osteria Veglio which had just reopened after being closed for over a month.  Our meal was oh so good.  CKay started with a quick fried 1/2 artichoke with sauteed greens and ceci puree with a light fonduta.  I had a local specialty--ravioli al plin.  It was served without any sauce in a cloth napkin with fresh grated parmesan.  It had me almost falling out of my chair it was so delectable.  Our second course dishes were a pasta with broccoli, and a bollito of chicken and truffles.  We drank a bottle of pinot bianco from Toros followed by a 1999 Roero Ampej from Correggia.

The next day we spent wandering around the towns of La Morra and Barolo.  We enjoyed an exhibit on cavatappi--corkscrews--in Barolo.  Our dinner was in Cherasco at Osteria La Torre.  Again the meal was superb.  The highlights were the meat stuffed ravioli dish shown just above, a feather light gnocchi with cheese sauce, and veal tail braised in barolo with some kind of sauteed green that we could not identify.  We started with one of our favorite wines--the Vieris '08 sauvignon blanc from Vie di Romans.  Then we had what I thought was the wine of the trip--the '07 ginestra casa mate from Elio Grasso--as good a barolo as I can remember.
.

Our last full day spent in Piemonte started very well with a walk thru the vineyards under cold but sunny skies that took us up to Castiglione Falletto.  We were surprised to find a climbing wall in one of the small piazzas. We returned to the cascina to get in our car to visit some more distant towns when we discovered we had a flat tire.  Beppe, Velda's husband, tried to take me to a place that could fix the flat, but because it was Saturday, nothing was open.  It was also supposed to snow later that evening and again on Sunday.  We were not feeling too good about the spare "mini" tire, so we opted to not go eat 30 minutes away in Canale that night, and also cancelled our lunch date for the next day.

Instead we had dinner in Barolo at La Cantinetta di Maurilio e Paolo.  Large servings of local dishes that included a risotto with radicchio and barolo; another version of ravioli al plin with sage and butter; baby lamb chops with a puree of potatoes, some lentils and zucchini; and 2 grilled quail with the potatoes and zucchini.  We drank a fine bottle of Renato Ratti's '07 barolo Marcenasco.  We finished up with a tasting plate of desserts.  We were the only non-Italians in the place.

We made it back to the airport on Sunday, driving no more than 50 MPH because of the spare tire until we got our tire fixed once we got on the autostrada.  We had some snow enroute, and then it snowed steadily once we were checked into our hotel. Our flights home on Monday were uneventful.  My next post will be about making a quick one day trip this past Thursday to Chincoteague to see a black-tailed godwit.  Stay tuned!

Northern Lapwing in North Carolina

In my New Year's day post I wrote about going up to Boston right after Thanksgiving to see one of the northern lapwings that have been the vagrant bird of the winter for the eastern U.S.  I had run into Mike Tove last fall at Mason Farm here in Chapel Hill when we were both out looking for a common redpoll that had been reported amongst a large flock of siskins.  He was convinced that a lapwing would be found in NC this winter.  He proved to be right.  This past Sunday a birder was birding a location northwest of Roxboro, NC in hopes of seeing a white-fronted goose that had been seen on a pond behind a church.  The goose was not there any longer, but in scoping the surrounding fields, he found a northern lapwing.

Even though I had seen the one in Massachusetts, this is only the 3rd northern lapwing on record for NC.  The first one in 1926 was a specimen which means no one saw it alive except for the person(s) who shot it, and the second one in 2004 was seen by only one person who photographed it, but did not tell anyone for 2 weeks and by then it had left. I called my sister Monday afternoon about 4:30 and said we should try for the bird.  We got to the church, which is located at the corner of NC 57 and Concord Church rd., at 5:20 to find several other birders but alas no lapwing.  One of the birders, Tom Driscoll, who my sister knew, told us it had flown off about 45 minutes before we arrived. 

Yesterday was a rainy dismal day, but the bird was reported being seen again starting at 7:30 AM.  Even though we were not too keen on standing in the rain scoping distant fields and pastures for the lapwing, my sis and I decided to try again since it would be a life bird for her.  We left Chapel Hill about 2:15 and arrived at the church to find no other birders.  In a blowing steady rain, we carefully scoped the fields for almost an hour, but other than a large flock of turkeys, and the numerous canada geese and blackbird groups, there was no sign of the lapwing.

Fortunately a local man and his granddaughter drove up and told us the bird was in a field just a 100 yards further down the road from the church parking lot.  We jumped in our car and followed him to the spot.  Much to our delight, we fairly quickly located the lapwing feeding with a few killdeer in a stubble field just west of a fence line.  It was too far away for me to get a good picture, so the 2 photos in this post are of the bird I saw in Massachusetts, and were taken by my friend Doug Koch.

We went back to the parking lot and waited a bit in case other late afternoon birders showed up, and did not know to look down the road.  As we were leaving, a pair of birders did come by, but they already knew to look at the other spot.

So far this winter there have been lapwings found in MA, NJ, VA, NC, and even GA.  And all of them have tended to stay for long periods of time where they were found.  While almost every winter a few are seen in Newfoundland, they are quite rare in the U.S.  The thinking is that superstorm Sandy is the reason so many have appeared on the east coast over the past 4 months.  I know that state birders are very happy that one was finally found in NC.  Derb Carter, who is tied with Ricky Davis for the highest NC life list at 436, saw the lapwing early on Monday, and Ali Ayoob, who is doing a NC big year, went to see it on Sunday as soon as he heard it had been found.  He is trying to break Derb's big year record of 351 birds seen, and so far has 199 on his list for 2013.  As of 7:15 this morning the northern lapwing is again being seen at the spot we saw it yesterday afternoon.

To wrap up this post, I want to mention a birder that I know from Ohio, Jay Lehman, who is doing a full ABA area big year.  His blog is jaysbigyear2013.blogspot.com. Stay tuned!