Monday, July 23, 2007

Answer to the last blog post title: Do Both!

So, saturday morning after a very nice breakfast of pancakes with Maine blueberry syrup lovingly prepared by my wife, I headed down to Logan, Ohio, to look for the Mississippi Kite.

I arrived at the Brass Circle golf course about 10:30 am and parked at the end of the course. About 10:40 AM, I observed one kite being harassed by two smaller (unidentified) birds, before it ducked down below the tree line. I saw it (or the other one, there's two and they are almost certainly breeding) again a few minutes later. And voila, that's number 362 on my life list and number 277 on my Ohio list.

Satisfied, I headed back up to Columbus, listening to my favorite radio show "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me - The NPR News Quiz" which is one of the funniest news commentary shows in all of media.

I went up to Sharon Woods Metro Park, which is in one of my atlas blocks. Although breeding season is coming to an end, there were still a lot of birds with recently fledged young - some that were so close to adult plumage that behavior was the main indication of a juvenile instead of an adult. I added the following confirmations for block 58D2NW: Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher, Cedar Waxwing, Eastern Kingbird, Brown-headed Cowbird, Blue Jay, Tufted Titmouse, Northern Mockingbird. I also updated Common Yellowthroat to a T7 code. This will probably be my last set of OBBA observations for this season, as household duties will keep me out of the field for the next couple of weeks.

But then it's shorebird season!

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