Great White and Great Blue Herons

 In the video this week we return to Florida and discuss Great White ... Herons!  This color morph is present in some subspecies of Great Blue.  For more info, watch the vid!

Great Salt Lake

 There's a lot going on in this vid!  Full frame prairie falcon, red-necked phalaropes, chukar.  Hordes of shovelors, wigeon, red-necked phalarope.  Want to watch bison sparring?  Want to listen to Western Meadowlark singing from 8 feet away?  This video has it all!

Blood Lake Utah

 Christyn and I did a fabulous hike a couple weeks ago a little outside of Park City, Utah.

Watch this vid to take in fun Western birds like Gray-headed Junco, Green-tailed Towhee, Mountain Chickadee and more. 

Scenery was tremendous and the flowers were nice too, check out the video above!

Virginia Beach Sandwich Terns

 Still with a some back-logged pics from the summer trip to Virginia that I haven't posted.

Sandwich Tern is always a fun bird to see.  I don't think I've ever been at a place where they're the most common tern, and probably haven't seen them more than a handful of times in my life.

Honestly I thought at least a couple of them were Forster's with the naked eye; their flight was much more like a medium sized tern than something in the Caspian/Royal class.

Their feeding was more of a dip than a plunge, somewhat similar to my memory of Gull-billed Tern

Finally a bird that I think is a juvie Sandwich.  Young royals have yellow bills.  The bill looks too heavy for Forster's, and I've never seen a young Forster's start getting orange in the bill until the spring.

Aging Royals

 I don't think I'd ever seen fresh juvie Royal Terns before, so I enjoyed seeing them in VA.

I don't think I've ever seen a large tern with a yellow bill.  The finely patterned scaps of young terns are always cool to see too.

I'm guessing this next bird is a slightly older juvie.

Which could make this bird with a couple darkish retained tail feathers and a bit heavier secondary bar than most of the adults maybe a one year old?

The adults seemed to enjoy flying around carrying fish

I rarely saw them transfer the fish to another bird, so whether they were just enjoying showing off to the neighbors, whether they were looking for mates/offspring that were just elsewhere or doing something else I don't know, but it was fun to watch them eventually attract a screaming mass of other birds that never quite caught up...

Finally a Caspian that flew by.  The Royals had much higher pitched voices and when this bird flew past calling I was disappointed since I couldn't tell it apart from a Caspian ... but it was a Caspian fortunately

Pelicans eat too!

 Brown Pelicans have to be one of the flagship birds of the Atlantic coast.  Sibley seems to imply it takes 3 years for them to reach maturity.  It'd be interesting to really study the age classes.

I've seen them plunge dive from heights before, but there were also some other feeding modes.  At one point a flock was jumping up, bouncing along the water, and then skiving in to the shallow water from a lower angle.

Of course there were some birds plunge diving a lot farther out.

A couple last flyby portraits

Found one!

 I spent much of June searching for Blue Grosbeak and a couple days ago I found one!

Now if the foliage makes you wonder where I found that bird you'd be right.  Because the one I found technically was in Virginia.

Ah well.  We visited in-laws in Virginia Beach.  These birds were singing away in the evening after a storm ran through.  I could heard 3 birds at one time at one point.

Given that they're still singing where they breed I suppose there's still hope that a person could run into one around here where they presumably wouldn't have a mate, but I've given up for the year here.

One last look at the chestnut wingbars...

Black-capped and Bell's Vireos

It took me a little bit, but eventually I started hearing Black-capped Vireos.  It took a little trial and error but I eventually tracked one down.

They seemed to forage in the middle layers of some of the denser scrubby trees.  I ended up seeing a few more.

 There can't be that many passerines with bright red eyes.

And transitioning from the most boldly marked vireo to possibly the least marked, Bell's. 

It eventually came out more into the open

Hopefully I'll recognize this bird if it turns up on Floral...

western sparrows

On my second afternoon of birding I went farther west to South Llano River State Park, a location that eBird suggested would be better for Black-capped Vireo.  I knew my chances would have been better in the morning, but heat of the afternoon was where the hole in the schedule was, so heat of the afternoon it was.

I couldn't help but get drawn over to a couple blinds by some feeders and water features.

Black-throated and Lark Sparrows were prominent

It being April the Lark Sparrows were in the process of building nests.

And the Black-throated's were singing away and teeing up nicely.

And while Lark Sparrow can be found some years in Berrien, and Black-throated at least once, to my knowledge this next species has never been seen in Michigan

Could this be the year for a lost Rufous-crowned Sparrow?  We'll see...

East meets west

Lost Maples wasn't just Golden-cheeked Warblers, there were a lot of other interesting birds as well.  Bewick's Wrens were fairly prominent in the soundscape though it took me a little bit of time to track one down.

A raven croaked away, I'm honestly not sure if it is Common or Chihuahuan.

The next bird sounded familiar to me as it sang...

The next one (a Scott's Oriole) not so much

How many Clay-colored's do you see in this pic?

One of them teed up.

A Savannah framed itself even more nicely.

And finally a bird from neither East or West (unless you count some section of Argentina), a Rhea (I think).  I was surprised by how many of the ranches had exotic game in their front yards, and they did make for some surprising scenes as a person would come around a curve on the rural highways.