Yellow-Crowned Night Heron Mason County 4/18/2022

   

    Yesterday Donna and John Haack found a Yellow-crowned Night Heron in Grant Township.  It is the first record of this southern bird in Mason County. Today with Brian Brosky guiding me by texts I got to the correct location on Nurnberg Rd, where I was fortunate enough to find another birder Joe Lipar, who was able to point me right at the seemingly glowing yellow crown of the wayward heron about 50 yards from the road.

  That's enough road birding.  Here's what has been visiting me at my house lately...

April 11 brought...

Belted Kingfisher

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

Peregrine Falcon

 On April 12 I saw...

Northern Flicker

Purple Finch

Flock of Scoters

Mostly White-winged but not always 
Black Scoter in yellow circle and Surf Scoter in the red.

And on April 13 the south wind brought the first of the year....

Northern Harrier

White-Crowned Sparrow

Brown Thrasher

As well as a Common Loon.

  So far for the year I've seen 95 bird species from the yard which puts me about 2 weeks ahead of last year when I didn't hit that total until May 1.

Leave It To This Guy

  Hang on tight, this post is going every, any, and no where all at once.

  Over a three day period starting last Wednesday, I spent almost three hours on a stake out of a Red-necked Grebe in the Big Sable River in Ludington State Park.  I'm not sure about the lung capacity of this bird but over that three hour period I saw it above the water for a total of about 5 minutes.

  While I waited for the Grebe to resurface, I saw a pair of large flat-tailed semi-aquatic rodents that were unwavering in their dedication to their task.

    Also seen on the river were paired-up ducks

Green-winged Teals

Buffleheads

   With the lingering cold weather, Common Loons have been lingering as well.  Sunday the morning low was 23 F.  By noon it was up to 37 F and at my work site I found over a dozen Loons..... 

 ....and a handful of Horned Grebes.

Hey,  I don't do that in your reservoir.

    Late this morning I found a Snowy Owl just one day before tying the late date for the county.

    Meanwhile back at home,  Chipping Sparrows finally arrived for the spring.  

    Also a Northern Harrier zipped by this morning.

    As I get older and my visual acuity weakens, identifying birds becomes more challenging.  Thankfully Turkey Vultures uncannily have been flying lower so that I can get a closer look.

October Over

Low clouds mute the colors

As October came to a close the fall colors reached their peak.

View from the south breakwater

  Several trips to the south breakwater over the past week yielded the following birds.

Sanderling

Dunlin

Great Black-backed Gull

GBBG and friends

Common Loon

Red-breasted Merganser

 Harrier Fishing(?)

Bonaparte's Gull

                                 

   Finally in my yard on Sunday I had my first Fox Sparrow of the season.

Kicking grass and taking grain

Broad-winged Hawks 9/18/2014 with video

    Thursday September 18, produced a third straight day of 39K+  Broadwings migrating over the lower Detroit River.  The official count at Lake Erie Metropark was in the upper 30,000's.  A similar if not greater number was observed but not counted at the Pt. Mouillee SGA Headquarters.  At Pt. Moo we enjoyed mostly high altitude but often straight over head views of this remarkable phenomenon.  The strong NNE wind gave the birds a tailwind that had them mostly streaming with any kettling limited to a couple of revolutions, then back to straightforward flight.

    

  Another year another pair of distant sparring Bald Eagles

  In the next photo the Broadwings are gaining altitude that is taking them into the clouds.

  The past few mornings the waning moon has been in the sky and many broadwings have been on a path that put them in the same field of view with it.  Although the hawks were flying high they weren't effectively at infinity as the 250,000 mile distant moon is.  In order to try to get them both in focus I stopped down my lens to f/20 and still didn't succeed in getting them both sharp.

  By 5:30 activity subsided at Pt. Moo, so I headed to the LEMP count area to see what the official counters came up with.   When I got there I found that they must have just left as the flow of hawks there had also stopped.   Seeing only two unfamiliar cars in the lot, I just did a quick loop and intended to continue on home.  But as I getting back on the road I gave a quick look back and thought I saw a kettle of hawks over the river.  I circled back into the parking lot, parked and grabbed my binoculars and walked out to the river's edge.  The birds that I had seen from the car had moved on behind the trees, 

    I ran into a couple of birders sitting on a bench near the counters table.  Thinking they had been there for the afternoon count, I asked them what they had seen.  Turns out, Phil and Mimi had just arrived, from Farmington Hills, five minutes before I had and thought that since the counters had stayed until 6 PM the previous day they would still be there.  Officially the count ends at 4 PM they only stay later when the migration continues through that time.  As we talked of Sandhill Cranes, warblers and the Outer Banks of North Carolina, I noticed a naked-eye kettle crossing the river toward us.  Over the next half hour we got great views of 500-600 Broad-wingeds, a couple of Bald Eagles and a Northern Harrier.

  Below are the birds I watched with Mimi and Phil.

 Click on the links below for a couple of short shaky videos of the hawks from Pt. Mouillee.

Broadwinged Video 1

Broadwinged Video 2