Don't look ... oh wait, Look!

 We all know how challenging the north winds for most of the last 3 weeks have been, so when they relented the day before Birdathon we couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.  The day before Birdathon Floral was filled with birds ... but you had to figure out where to look.

First rule of birdathon (OK, it's not the first rule, but work with me here):  Don't look at Catbirds.

On scouting morning, second rule was: Don't look at white-throated sparrows

There were hordes of them, and time spent on them could be better spent on more likely candidates for rarities.  Of course that second night of south winds meant that the White-throats exited stage north and we had to work to find a single one on Birdathon day.  They'd flown! (kinda like the White-eyed Vireo that had been hanging out).

Of course one of the reasons not to look at WT Sparrows was that you needed to home in instead on other birds a person might need.  Like (this year), thrushes.  Up until Birdathon day I'd seen one (!!!) Swainson's Thrush this spring, and zero Gray-cheeks.  So it was a bit of a relief that Gray-cheeked was pretty easy on the big day.

Unlike the White-throats, White-crowns stuck around in decent numbers.

Unlike the warblers which has mostly bailed.  We had to work to find even many of the common ones.

The one bird we didn't have to work for?  Least Bittern.  It's a bird that can't be expected, or really even planned for.  So we were pretty happy when a Least jumped into the scope view as we looked at a Coot at the dump pond.  And we were flabbergasted when we found a second one later in the day (with more bonus moorhens to boot!)

The theme of the day might have been trading birds.  We didn't find a Prairie Warbler ... but a Summer Tanager was pitty-tucking where the Prairie was supposed to be.

Tiscornia gave its frequent contribution of a 3 bird bump.  One of them is almost always RB Merg.  There weren't any mergs ... but both black-backed gulls were present.  I doubt we've ever had both black-backs on Birdathon.

At any rate, it was a very enjoyable day.  While we didn't break any records, I'd had the best sleep the day before that I've had pre-Birdathon in years for which I was very grateful, and no doubt contributed the much more relaxed feel.