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