Saw some rain coming yesterday so headed to Hornsby for another shorebird and migrant fix!! Lots of White-rumped Sand, a flyby of 3 Black-bellied Plovers, Semipalm plovers, beautiful breeding plumage phalaropes, Dowitchers, and Stilt sands and the first time to ever see all 5 peeps on the same day!! Also lots of wet swallows, migrating Black terns and Franklin’s gulls, and 8 yellow headed blackbirds. It was a good day to be be a shorebirder!!!
Can ya’ll ID these 3 Texas winter shorebirds: 1/5/25, Galveston East Beach. Started the shorebird scoresheet for 2025 with 12 species.
16 species of shorebird at Hornsby this morning, including these guys which Eric just lectured on last night. If you are in Shorebird class of 2022 — give these guys a name.
We recently read a very good book called “Orison for a Curlew”(Orison = prayer). It’s about the Slender-billed Curlew of Europe. Some of the narrative took us to places we had birded in Bulgaria. I highly recommend!! https://www.goodreads.com/…/27278141-orison-for-a-curlew Regretfully, on a Bulgaria birding site, I just saw this article on the end of the story….
This is a juvenile Green Heron from Hornsby this morning. It was hunting water bugs. The Green Heron was the first bird I identified by myself at age 10. In the 51 years between then and now I don’t think I’ve ever noticed a juvenile green Heron before.
Had a great trip with the 2024 Gulls Class to Galveston etc. Highlight was the California Gull initially found by Sarah “blue legs” Womack!! Palm Warbler found by Doug was also a great bird!! We had 6 gull species and numerous shorebirds.
There’s a nice discussion of Pacific vs American Golden Plover on the “Advanced Bird ID” FB page. You’ll have to join that group to see the rest of post.
