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.

558 Flickers,This Must Be Some Sort of Record.

     Last Tuesday morning I counted 110 Northern Flickers migrating over my yard.  According to Dave Dister, compiler of the county bird records and author of recently published Birds of Mason County, the previous high daily count in Mason County was 89.  

   This morning as I was walking around my yard just before 8 AM, I started counting as Flickers once again were flying over in a steady stream of one or two at a time. When I got to 30 I looked at my phone and saw that only 10 minutes elapsed since I started counting. So I set up a chair on the north side of my yard and kept track of the number of Flickers traveling in the south to north migratory direction.  Within an hour I had beat the county record which I set on Tuesday and headed into uncharted territory, possibly a state record (at least according to ebird). Whitefish Point may have something to say about that.  By 11:30 the pace slowed dramatically but not until I had counted 542 of the yellow-shafted woodpeckers.  Over the early afternoon hours I added 16 more to bring the daily total to 558.

     The heavily overcast skies made it difficult to get any decent photos early on.......

......but in the 10 o'clock hour the Sun poked through momentarily and gave me some decent lighting to work with.

  For the second time this month I was able to observe 6 of the 7 woodpecker species that normally occur in Michigan's lower peninsula. On Friday the 3rd I missed the Pileated...but not today.

Pileated Woodpecker

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

Downy Woodpecker

Red-bellied Woodpecker.

   The only woodpecker that I missed today was the Hairy, which I usually see a couple of times per week.

  Woodpeckers weren't the only birds of interest that I took poorly illuminated photos of today..

Common Loon

and another

Belted Kingfisher.

   A pair of Kingfishers may be nesting about 100' below my yard, down the bluff.  I frequently see them when I look over the edge.

    Last but not least.

Merlin

2013 Monroe CBC Reconnaissance

  The 2013 Monroe Christmas Bird Count will take place on Saturday December 21.  This morning I scouted the Lake Erie shore at Erie Rd., one of sites that will be surveyed for the count.  Didn't see a whole lot but as the Lake freezes in the next couple of weeks the birds should be drawn to the open water at this location.

Belted Kingfisher

Two Lesser Black-backed Gulls

 Lesser Black-backed Gull in flight

 Lesser Black-backed Gull with two Bonaparte's Gulls

Close up of  Lesser Black-backed Gull

 Bonaparte's Gull in light snow

 Bonaparte's Gull head in the water

 Bonaparte's Gull