I stopped by the Holiday Beach this afternoon to do a little hawk watching and enjoy the great weather. Not much was flying, perhaps 10 raptors were seen in the distance over the course of two hours. Flocks of American Goldfinch and Horned Larks streamed by. Three Wilson's Snipe were in the little pond next to the tower which is always nice to see.
Feeling that nothing was happening, I tried my luck at the Holiday Beach Memorial Forest across the road from Holiday Beach, and noticed many Red breasted Nuthatches, as well as Black capped Chickadees... Then, I hear a ruckus above from a flock of birds... Nice! White winged Crossbills, only a week or two after lifering them at Rondeau!
It was cool to see these birds today and hear them and watch them feed on Spruce cones. At one point, the papery spruce cone seed-hulls were raining down from the treetops as I observed the crossbills feeding. They were falling like a ticker-tape in a ticker tape parade.
I wanted to get this posting up quickly, so I'm cutting it short here!
Good birding!
Dwaynejava
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| PS: These are the Spruce cone seeds that they are eating! |
How cool that you captured the White-winged Crossbill on video! Thanks for sharing that with us :)
ReplyDeleteAwesome! Thanks for the video. I got this bird as a life bird today in the same location while out with the group.
ReplyDeletetiffanie, lol... the video is an embedded YouTube video from Cornell university... I can't take credit for that brilliant footage! :-)
ReplyDeleteKelly... did my posting inspire the walk out to that area today??? .... hoping! :-)
I think they were already planning to step over there after the hawk tower. But hey, what does the "O" stand for in HBMO? Hope to see you Saturday.
ReplyDeleteKikipotamus:
ReplyDeleteHBMO = Holiday Beach Migration Observatory