Birding Cornell

I visited Cornell Lab of Ornithology a few days ago with my boss and colleagues, for a full day of meetings. But with a Cooper's Hawk zooming past the window, or views like these out of the meeting room windows

how can one not want to go birding? Especially when our Cornell collaborators are some of the keenest birders in North America. On Monday early morning we walked Sapsucker Woods reserve by the Lab. Lovely walk, not too many migrants around but clearly some Zugunruhe among the birds, ahead of a weather change and wind shift. With some efforts we managed to find a nice selection of migrant warblers, including Hooded, Maggy and this REV:

On the lake, a young Pied-billed Grebe seemed rather out-of-place (this photo was taken through Lab windows):

eBird checklist for Sapsucker Woods here.

Next night the weather finally shifted and radar images showed heavy passage to our northwest. We headed out much before dawn for nocturnal listening, which was slower than we had expected - probably rain showers to our west knocked birds down. Still it was good fun listening out for Tzits and Tzicks, a distant Barred Owl vocalised and shorebirds were on the move too. eBird checklist here.

After dawn we birded Roy H. Park Preserve and a couple more nearby sites, which performed a bit below expectations but was still OK. Several warblers, thrushes, sparrows and others. I struggled a bit with my new camera, all I got was this Red-breasted Nuthatch:

And a female Hooded Warbler

Three eBird checklists for the morning, from Roy H., Cornell community gardens and pond.
Many thanks to Ian and Chris for great birding and for eBirding...

BC day 9 - dawn chorus and two life birds

My last full day in Canada. I had a good day of birding in and around Vancouver. In the early morning I joined a dawn chorus walk in Queen Elizabeth Park led by David Bradley from Bird Studies Canada, which was part of the Vancouver Bird Week events. Weather conditions were not favourable with low temperatures and clouds and strong wind, so relatively few birds were singing. But still we had a nice morning. Several singing Yellow-rumped Warblers and a single Western Tanager were the sole proper migrants we encountered. Other than those we had some fine local birds in the form of Brown Creeper and Red-breasted Nuthatch.

Brown Creeper in terrible light

Red-breasted Nuthcatch

Thanks David for a great morning.

Later on I headed up with my brother and his family to Cypress Mountain. We walked the Yew Lake trail that held more snow than we had expected. But it was very pretty there. I had two main targets there - and I succeeded to see both, though none photographed. I first saw Varied Thrushes. These epic thrushes are dead common in winter in my brother's garden in Vancouver, but now have retreated to high-elevation coniferous forests. From a very early age I was dying to see them. I saw two birds today, brief but good views. What a cracker. I also wanted to find Townsend's Warblers that I couldn't find in Vancouver's parks in recent days. We first had a couple of singing birds, but couldn't get visual contact with them. When we got back to the carpark I finally saw one just above our car. Phew. Other highlights were a couple of Black-headed Grosbeaks, and a Hairy Woodpecker. 

'Pacific' Dark-eyed Junco