Yellow Rail!

The new year has scarcely begun and I have already seen what will almost certainly be in my top ten birds of 2011. Like a feathered mouse, the Yellow Rail is widely regarded as being one of the hardest to see breeding birds in the United States.

A few people have emailed me asking for details/advice on seeing this elusive bird. For their sake, I've written a quick narrative about our find:

Expectations were low (and that always helps). After spending a couple hours sorting through Chipping Sparrows looking for an "easy" Lark Sparrow at the nearby North River Golf Course, Jacob Socolar, Robert and James Meehan and I were struggling to stay dry while fording a small tidal creek at North River Marsh.


Wet and mud-splattered, we proceeded to tie ropes anchored with water-filled juice bottles around our ankles. Thus manacled like convicts we combed through a vast Spartina prairie which Jacob assured us was John Fussell's most reliable spot for Yellow Rails.

After about two hours puzzling over fleeting glances of ammodramus sparrows and marsh wrens and the occasional misstep into a deep hollow hidden by Needle Rush or a patch of quick mud we were cold and filthy and nearly ready to admit defeat. Suddenly a small yellow-and-brown streaked bird popped up from near our rope. It fluttered away from us for about three seconds showing obvious white patches in its wings before settling back down and vanishing some 60 feet ahead.

I recorded our unsuccessful attempt to flush it again.

No, you won't see the bird in this clip, but it does show our setup and the sort of habitat in which we found it.

The sighting left us ecstatic and we were hardly bothered when we again were unable to find the Lark Sparrow. We finished our day at Fort Macon State Park where we found a few Common Eiders near the rock jetty.

Jacob, Robert and Jimmy had to drive back to Durham that night, but I stuck around Emerald Isle for the weekend. It would be a longer and birdier stay than I had planned!

The next day I went back to the golf course and found the Lark Sparrow almost immediately in the exact location we had spent hours searching the previous day.

That's birding for you I guess.

I spent the afternoon birding Harker's Island where the best bird was probably a wooden decoy of a Long-tailed Duck I found inside the museum.

On Sunday I braved the frigid temperature and kayaked out to the Rachel Carson Estuarine Reserve, a shorebird paradise across a channel from Beaufort.

It was swarmed with Dunlin, Oystercatchers, Willets, Marbled Godwits and Short-billed Dowitchers.

Here's a dowitcher foraging in the classic "sewing-machine" style.

Bird highlights of the trip were Red Knot

and Piping Plover.

The next morning I woke up to blizzard conditions. I had never even seen snow at the beach before and I was staring out into a white-out at Emerald Isle!

The icy roads made my long weekend even longer. Madness!

The weather did turn the ocean into a lake, which made for excellent sea-watching conditions when visibility wasn't diminished by precipitation.
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I received a lot of responses to my last post about my top ten birds of 2010. I'll go over those next post.

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So far I have come up with 5 target birds for 2011:

1. Golden Eagle (if I were going to the neotropics this year I would replace "Golden" with "Harpy")
2. Black Rail (the Yellow Rail has me foolishly optimistic)
3. Gryphon Vulture (I missed this 4 years ago in Crete, hoping to see one in Croatia)
4. Roller
5. Eurasian Bee-eater

Help me add more!

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Ali inspired me to try this bird-a-day silliness. It will be fun while it lasts, but I see no chance of making it past February.

Birds so far:

01/01/11	Red-breasted Nuthatch
01/02/11	Pine Siskin
01/03/11	Barred Owl
01/04/11	American Kestrel
01/05/11	Ruby-crowned Kinglet
01/06/11	Purple Finch
01/07/11	Yellow Rail
01/08/11	Lark Sparrow
01/09/11	Piping Plover
01/10/11	Red-throated Loon
01/11/11	White-winged Scoter
01/12/11	Red-tailed Hawk
01/13/11	Cedar Waxwing
01/14/11	Eastern Bluebird
01/15/11	Black Vulture
01/16/11	Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

Top 10 birds of 2010

Perhaps this is a bit of a cliche...

...but I just have to savor 2010 as it was such a great year bird-wise. I saw 935 bird species 644 of which I had never seen before. I also published and sold out the first printing of my book, Birds of the Tyler Place, and I launched this blog.

Making a top 10 list...

...of any kind is always a tricky exercise; it can be so tough not to leave something out that deserves to be included. In this case I tried to pick my birds based primarily on their rarity, conservation status and toughness to find, and secondarily on just how awesome/cool/unique they are. So phenomenal birds like Andean Cock-of-the-rock and Scarlet Macaw didn't make the list. But there were also trade-offs the other way: I left off the endangered Galapagos Penguin because it so closely resembles several other penguin species and I couldn't include every endangered species from the Galapagos (there are far too many).

Not surprisingly all 10 (err... 11) were South American birds and all are listed as a conservation concern by the IUCN and amazingly for 8 of them I have photos.

Here's the challenge:

Have you seen any of the birds on this list? Let me know how many and the reader with the most will earn some sort of recognition (my money is on Harry Legrand). I bet nobody has seen them all!

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Hon. mention: Westland Petrel

So I failed at my own game and have listed 11 species. But I just have to include the Westland Petrel I saw on kolibri expeditions July 26th pelagic. Not only is this a vulnerable species, but it was also the first confirmed record of the bird for Lima, Peru (thanks to photos by Gunnar Engblom and some help from an expert).

I couldn't put it in the top ten because I had previously seen this bird in New Zealand in 2009 and it just isn't much of a looker compared to what else I've got here.

10. Toucan Barbet

Straddling the border between handsome and comical is the near-threatened and Choco endemic Toucan Barbet. The arrhythmic car horn group song was a commonly heard sound at higher more remote elevations of La Hesperia. I also saw these up close enjoying some bananas at the feeding station of Refugio Paz de las Aves.

While they can tolerate habitat fragmentation reasonably well, poaching for the pet trade has earned Toucan Barbet near-threatened status with the IUCN.

9. Plate-billed Mountain-Toucan

Seeing a toucan is always fun. I always get the impression that the heavy bill will tip the bird right off its perch. The Choco endemic and near-threatened Plate-billed Mountain-Toucan is special to me not only because of its limited range and conservation status, but because it is the only bird on this list that I found at La Hesperia Biological Station where I worked for six months. I found several noisy flocks with up to 8 birds around the summit of La Hesperia around 2100 meters elevation. This bird is also featured on the cover of Ridgley and Greenfield's Birds of Ecuador.

8. Coppery-chested Jacamar

A gorgeous bird in an awesome family is the vulnerable Coppery-chested Jacamar. I was able to see several jacamars this year, but the Coppery-chested is by far the most sought-after as its numbers are declining with habitat destruction. Bird Life International estimates that only 2,310-3,780 individuals remain.
I was fortunate to find a pair in the Bombascuro section of Parque Nacional Podocarpus in Ecuador. I had always thought of jacamars as butterfly specialists, but these two were adeptly decimating wasps. It made me wish for a better camera and better light.

7. Flightless Cormorant

Along with Darwin's Finches, the endangered Flightless Cormorant is a classic case study in natural selection at the birthplace of the theory of evolution, the Galapagos Islands. In the absence of land predators, the ability to fly no longer conferred any selective advantage for the fish-eating birds.

While snorkling off Isabella Island I had a pair of exuberant (and probably enamored) quacking Flightless Cormorants paddle straight into my mask!

The population fluctuates with El Nino cycles between about 400 and roughly 1800 mature individuals (Bird Life International).

6. Long-wattled Umbrellabird

The vulnerable and Choco endemic Long-Wattled Umbrellabird is one of the funniest-looking birds out there and I'm really sorry I never got a picture (images here). The one immature bird I saw up close seemed very curious about people. Unfortunately, this characteristic has made the species highly susceptible to hunting pressure and Jatun Sacha Bilsa in western Ecuador is one of the few places where they can be reliably seen.

I would love to see a group of lekking males, and if I had, then this bird would probably be up a couple spots in my top ten.

5. Andean Condor

The near-threatened Andean Condor is so famous it hardly needs any introduction. It is the national bird of Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and Colombia. Ironically, it is nearly extirpated from Colombia, and Ecuador, where only about 65 individuals are estimated to remain (Bird Life International), is not far behind.
Incredibly, I saw three condors in Ecuador (or about 5% of the wild population!). The first was just after descending from the summit of Cotopaxi (yeah, that was an epic day) and the other two were in Parque Nacional Cajas near Cuenca.

4. Giant Antpitta
Like everybody else who has seen the Choco endemic and vulnerable Giant Antpitta, mine was the famous "Maria" of Refugio Paz de las Aves in Ecuador. It was the first antpitta I had ever laid eyes after being teased so thoroughly by singing but invisible antpittas elsewhere. Bird Life International estimates only 970-2,173 individuals remain.

3. Waved Albatross
Nearly all nesting of the critically endangered Waved Albatross is confined to Espanola Island in the Galapagos. I was fortunate to be there at the right time of year to see pairs "dancing" and adults incubating eggs. Seeing an albatross is always a thrill, especially for somebody who grew up on the albatross-less east coast of the US. But to see an endangered species up close going through nesting and courtship behaviors was absolutely priceless!

2. Golden-backed Mountain-Tanager



The endangered, Peru-endemic and beautiful Golden-backed Mountain-Tanager can only be found at essentially one remote location high in the elfin forest of Bosque Unchog in the Huanuco province of Peru. I found a flock of four here with the original guide, Reyes Rivera, who back in the 1970s had showed the bird to an ornithological expedition from LSU leading to its "discovery." Despite the finding, habitat degradation has continued and the population is estimated at 250 to 2500 individuals by Bird Life International.

1. Banded Ground-Cuckoo

Exceptionally rare, endangered and nearly impossible to see, the Choco endemic Banded Ground-Cuckoo is probably the only bird on this list I would NOT trade for seeing a Harpy Eagle (my biggest miss of 2010). It is opportunistically hunted for food and its habitat is rapidly disappearing to make way for African Oil Palm plantations. There are only 3 or 4 protected areas where it is known to occur. Bird Life International estimates a wild population of only 468-1,870 individuals.

I saw mine at Jatun Sacha Bilsa in western Ecuador where the first Banded Ground-Cuckoo was netted, tracked and filmed during nesting. For a great story about some hard-core birders twitching it at another location, see this account by Sam Woods. Images here.

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Well, that's about as much congratulating myself as I can handle. Next time I reckon I should lay out a top ten wanted birds list for 2011. I will need some help though as I will be in the Greek Isles and the Western Balkans in late May and have no idea what's out there. If you have birded that part of the world or know somebody who has, then please let me know!

Christmas Bird Count highlights!

I signed up to help out with four Christmas Bird Counts (CBCs) in North Carolina this year: Durham, Chapel Hill, Bodie/Pea Island and Mattamuskeet.

Yeah, it sounds like a lot of work to go out and count every single sparrow and chickadee, but it helps contribute to a long-running data set. And these counts are also a great chance to get out with some fantastic birders who have fantastic scopes, which greatly increases the odds of seeing rarities.

An unusual early snowstorm made for an especially wintery feel to the counts this year. And I was among the many people who skipped the Chapel Hill CBC to go sledding; Yahoo! I did see some decent birds on the Al Buehler Trail on my way to the Duke Golf Course--a CBC no man's land stuck between the Durham and Chapel Hill count circles.

I can't even remember if I participated in the Durham CBC last year, but the memory of this years' should last awhile! The above comment about scopes didn't hold true as Doug Shadwick and this professional birder from France took their fancy scopes off to some wind-sheltered field leaving Robert Meehan and me to cover the frozen windswept section of Falls Lake by the railroad grade using Robert's "Parkinson's disease" tripod to attempt to count unidentifiable "ducks" several miles away.

Despite this handicap we found quite a few lingering shorebirds including these Dunlin who were out ice-skating.

But the most unusual find was a blue form Snow Goose that flew over us early. After we finished counting we went on a short wild goose chase and found the flock by a nearby pond where it had already been spotted by another birding party.
Brian Bockhahn has way better pictures from when the goose was much closer.

Of course a Snow Goose goes from being a highlight in Durham to becoming merely one of several thousand "Down East."

One odd Cackling Goose hanging out with a flock of snows was the celebrity goose of the Bodie/Pea Island CBC and a new NC bird for me.
(Hooray for two awful goose pictures!; see Ali Iyoob's way better photo)

Our party's best find was this White-winged Dove we stumbled upon at North Bodie (Life bird #1446!). I've been double-checking every Mourning Dove since.

But our rarity was eclipsed by other ridiculous sightings of Black Rail, Long-eared Owl and two Saw-whet Owls! Unfortunately only a few people got to see these rare and impossible to see species and I was not among them.

I did catch a fleeting glimpse of a Virginia Rail, which I'll count as a state bird, since I had previously seen one in Vermont. I also saw my first Sedge Wrens in NC by the Bodie Lighthouse at dusk. My "Grass Wren" sighting in Ecuador kept this from being a life bird.

I did get a second life-bird (#1447) for the day in an Orange-crowned Warbler at North Pond. I had poorly seen, but not counted one last year at Mattamuskeet, so I was glad to finally get a good look at one.

Fittingly, Orange-crowned Warblers seemed to be all over the place the next day at the Mattamuskeet CBC. But my best warbler there was definitely the Yellow-throated I found with a flock of Pine Warblers near the south end of the causeway.

Other state birds for the day were Common Moorhen, Canvasback and Common Merganser, but after hours of birding I had not seen a life bird; no Eurasian Wigeon or Golden Eagle. But just before sunset Brian and his party told us about a couple Clay-colored Sparrows nearby in a yard. Ali kindly showed us the spot and my 1448th life bird (thanks Ali!; his photo).

On our way back down the causeway we spotted an American Bittern standing awkwardly by the roadside away from cover for #1449. I was pretty excited about this since Robert had seen three invisible bitterns over the past couple days while I was standing next to him.

So in just two days I was able to see four life birds and 12 state birds (those mentioned above plus Merlin and Black Scoter, which should bring my NC list up to 230); not bad at all!

It's amazing how ubiquitous the snipe are in the Mattamuskeet area as it seemed like there was one in every front yard.
A quick shout-out to Ali, Matt Daw and Kyle Kittleberger. It's great to see young people into birding and at 16(ish), these Raleigh kids are metaphorical zygotes to the birding world. Yet they are already such knowledgeable, intelligent birders. Their exuberance is infectious and their nonstop bird story-telling made the drive home go quickly.

Before I end I have to reprimand everybody for losing my nest quiz from last time by not guessing.

In fact hardly anyone even read the last post. I guess the septuagenarian backyard bird-feeder theme is revolting to the modern birder hoping to shed such stereotypes.

But for all zero of you who were curious, the answer was Band-winged Nightjar.
Here's the follow-up shot up of the fledgling starting to resemble mom. I did find this nest around 1300 meters elevation--about 500 meters below its altitude range (Ridgley and Greenfield) so its identity was a bit of a surprise once I finally worked it out.

Coming very soon... My top ten bird sightings of 2010!

Stay tuned...

Yard bird #76 is life bird #1444

Can you guess what it might be? We will get to that later...

First, another congratulations to Harry Legrand, who nailed last week's nest quiz.

An absolutely atrocious picture. Not that you can tell, but the owner of the eggs was this Pauraque.

For some reason my most recent post got buried back in the October section even though I published it in December. For those of you who may have missed it, see: Birding Tiputini Biodiversity Station.

Second, great news out of New England. My friend, Peter Capobianco, has photographed what may be the first ever state record of a Lazuli Bunting. Go Pete! (it wouldn't be a post if I didn't mention his name somewhere). Link to Lazuli Bunting? pictures.

Anyway, the weather here has been downright nasty lately by North Carolina standards. Add to that final exams, and I sure haven't been outside a whole lot.

As if to reward my laziness, a Pine Siskin showed up in my backyard yesterday and a pair appeared again today.
I had been after this species for sometime. And by "after" I mean patiently waiting at home for one to show up. Yard bird #76, NC bird #217, ABA bird #285 and life bird #1444 all at once. A life bird in my backyard isn't likely to happen again any time soon. Unless of course I were to move to California. Or I suppose a flock of Evening Grosbeaks could show up, but that seems like quite a long-shot.

I may as well keep going with the backyard birding theme for this post. I just can't wait to be 75 years old!

The three previous additions to the yard list were Brown Creeper, Golden-crowned Kinglet

and Red-winged Blackbird.

The flocks of red-wingeds have been all over the place in the neighboorhood this winter including up in pine trees feeding, which I had no idea they ever did.

Obviously, this isn't a new yard bird, but it is the orangest House Finch I've ever seen.

Sibley has always claimed that the color can be variable; turns out he wasn't lying!

And check out this video of a ruby-crowned kinglet at my feeder going nuts at his own reflection in the window.

Make sure to watch it in HD!

Apparently these birds are rather territorial in winter. I saw another kinglet doing the same routine for his reflection in the window of a parked BMW.

We may as well do another nest quiz even though we know Harry Legrand will just win again.

Yes, I know. The adult is in the picture and the egg already hatched; so this is really more of a "Name that bird" quiz. But it's a cute picture (click it!) and the one I'll put up next time, of the chick much larger and about ready to fledge, may be one of the best bird pictures I have ever taken ever.

Please leave comments!

To inspire you (as if this post weren't inspiring enough!) here is a question:

What should be the topic of my next South America post? The Galapagos (epic pictures)? Jatun Sacha Bilsa (Banded Ground-Cuckoo story)? The Durand Brothers' Lodge (birding the Amazon on $30 per day)?

I'll probably write one first about Christmas counts. I plan to participate in Durham, Chapel Hill, Lake Mattamuskeet and Bodie/Pea Island.

What do you do between fall migration and Christmas counts?

Hopefully your answer was to go birding anyway. And depending on your region and/or religion this question may be completely irrelevant.

For me this year, unfortunately, it meant mostly working on a bunch of midterms and applying for a grant from the National Science Foundation. Yuck.

Anyway that's my excuse for the hiatus from blogging...a lack of time and birds exciting enough to go see locally.

Of course birds are everywhere and you have to find a deep dark hole to miss them.


I stumbled upon this surprisingly tame Great Blue Heron at Duke Gardens on a walk with my family. Click the picture for a high-res view; you can see how banged-up their bills can get.

And I did get to go out with Robert Meehan to Falls Lake again. He promised me Rusty Blackbirds, which obligingly vanished from existence. But we did find a Lesser Black-backed Gull mixed in with some Ring-billeds and Herrings--not a bad find for the piedmont (I refuse to get excited over this bird though...it was a new ABA bird for Robert, who claims it's only the 4th record
at Falls Lake
for Durham County, though I'm sure a fair few crusty veterans would beg to differ...see Robert's comment below)


See if you can find the Lesser Black-backed Gull in the photo! (hint: it has a black back). At least one of the other gulls thinks this is a boring (or hilarious?) game.

We also found a few late shorebirds: 2 Dunlin, a few dozen Least Sanpipers and one depressed-looking Greater Yellowlegs.

The highlight for me was a flock of about 60 American Pipits (NC bird #216 for me!)

Continuing with the game theme...

Can you guess what bird laid this egg??

Hint: I found (errr.... my guide found) this nest in the Ecuadorian Amazon at Tiputini Biodiversity Station, a rediculously spectacular (and remote!) birdwatching spot, which will be the topic of my next post. Heck, it's in the Yasuni, which rivals Peru's Manu for the title of "most biodiverse spot on the planet."

Hopefully that will bring you back for more!

Stay tuned...

Birding Tiputini Biodiversity Station

First off, a big congratulations to Harry Legrand for correctly identifying the nest as belonging to a tinamou...impressive!

He was off with his species guess of Cinereous...this was actually a Bartlett's (correct me if I'm wrong!)


Now before I dive headfirst into the Amazon I should mention that I will be paraphrasing myself from my other blog's post from back in April: Elementary my dear Hoatzin. If this current post leaves you wanting more (like pictures of monkeys), then follow that link.

Alright let's give this place some context:


View Larger Map

Yeah, this place is a bit out of the way. Travel from the nearest airport (Coca) takes 6 hours and 3 legs via boat, truck and motorized canoe. So you'll have to budget a day of travel each way.

They neither solicit nor discourage "tourists" or birders from visiting; the station is primarily for researchers: tropical ecologists, primatologists, ornithologists, etc. to conduct field work. So it has a much different (and refreshing) vibe to it, than the standard Amazonian ecotourism lodge. They do have fantastic and knowledgable resident guides who know all of the place's 550+ species and ours, Jose, showed spent a couple days enthusiastically leading us around a few of the trails.

I ended up at Tiputini because I had the serendipity to meet one of the station's directors, Prof. Kelly Swing, while he was visiting La Hesperia with a group of students.

I managed to convince my buddy, Peter Capobianco, to fly down from the states to get in on the trip as well.

Anyway, on to the birds:

What stood out most about the bird life at Tiputini, aside from the staggering total species diversity, is that so many of the birds encountered were considered either "rare, scarce or local" according to the field guide (Ridgley and Greenfield). Most birds were encountered only a single time. For a serious birdwatcher this does demand constant vigilance as a once-in-a-lifetime type species could show itself at any moment and then disappear just as quickly. For us this happened when were were with Jose when he spotted an (to us anyway) invisible Rufous-vented Ground Cuckoo. He said it was the second one he had seen at Tiputini in four years. Don't worry I made up for it later at Jatun Sacha Bilsa (account coming soon to a blog near you!).

Not a mega-bird, but one example of something "rare" that cooperated for a photo was this Black-bellied Cuckoo that joined us in the 35-meter canopy tower. We must have spent 40 hours in that tower over the course of our six full days at the station. It was an awesome spot to see passing groups of macaws (we saw lots of Scarlet as well as Blue-and-Yellow and Chestnut-fronted), canopy flocks (loaded with Paradise, Opal-rumped and Opal-crowned Tanagers) and various toucans including:

Many-banded Aracari.

And here a Common Piping-Guan:

...and a Double-toothed Kite:

...also joined us in the canopy tower.

Along the river we found a foolishly tame juvenile Great Black-Hawk:

...and a totally badass Sunbittern!

...not a great photo unfortunately.

Another nice vantage point was a gazebo by the dock overlooking the river. A nearby fruiting tree was a popular spot for Dacnis, such as:
...this Yellow-bellied
...and this Black-faced

Combining our lists for the 6 days we had a little over 170 bird species (we each individually had around 165) and also saw 8 types of monkeys. Bird highlights were many, but to name a few: the macaws, the Salvin's Curassows (we saw 7 individuals in one day), the Bartlett´s Tinamou, Gray-winged Trumpeter, Black-faced Hawk, and of course the Hoatzins:There were loads clambering clumsily among the trees by La Laguna.

We were a bit unfortunate in our timing in that we missed the ornithologist who was mist netting understory species. It would have been nice to see some of these birds up close as finding them in the field we both decided was some of the most difficult bird-watching either of us had ever experienced, because of the poor light under three or four layers of canopy, the density of the habitat, and the diversity of similarly plumaged species (i.e. dusky-throated antshrike vs cinereous antshrike).

Another bit of bad timing was that the mannikins happened to be molting rather then displaying and every individual we did happen to see was immature/female and essentially unidentifiable. Otherwise we probably would have added 6 or so charismatic species to our lists.

I was really hoping for a Harpy Eagle, which are erratic, but regular at the station. It's hard to really complain though:

This Crested Owl was one of many "consolation prizes." A big thanks Jose for this stakeout; it was my first owl sighting in Ecuador!

I hope the mediocre photos managed to pull you through all the text. For wayyy better shots check out Pete's work here. Pages 1 through 10 have Tiputini pictures. My personal favorite.

More information about Tiputini can be found here.

I would end on video, but don't have anything from Tiputini worth showing. Sooooo instead let's have another nest quiz!

Hint: this one was found at approximately 1500 meters elevation on a trail at La Hesperia (about 2 hours west of Quito).

Good luck!

Connecticut Warbler and White-rumped Sandpiper at Falls Lake

I went out this morning to Falls Lake with Robert Meehan, the man who discovered the Connecticut Warbler a week ago, with pretty low expectations. The bird hadn't been reported for about 48 hours and it had been 7 days since Robert's original discovery.

Against all odds we flushed it from the sedge along the lake side of the peninsula and then spent a good hour following it through the thickets losing it and re-finding it. I tried to get some pictures, but the thing always seems to keep at least two or three layers of vegetation between it and any observers. I have a hard time focusing through dense stuff with my point-and-shoot, so this is the best I could do.
We came up empty on our first sweep along the path and with no sign of any Palm Warblers we assumed that the Connecticut was long gone. So we went further out to check for lingering shorebirds. Surprisingly we found 2 Least Sandpipers, a Dunlin and a White-rumped Sandpiper, which we thought would end up being our consolation prize for missing the Connecticut. The best part was that these birds had apparently been feeding on sedatives and let us walk right up to within 15 feet of them without ever taking flight.

It was probably the best closest look at shorebirds I've ever had anywhere and the White-rumped was my 215th NC bird!

Back to the main celebrity though...

When looking for the Connecticut, definitely check all the sedge (tall grassy stuff) along the shoreline. This is where we first flushed it and where we found it again later after losing it. We also stumbled upon a Marsh Wren this way (a life bird for Robert!)

Seven days seems like quite a long time for a migrant to stick around and Robert and I could only foolishly wonder if it might stick around to winter. I'm sure other folks will be checking up on it this weekend.

I'm going to end with a re-posting of my link to the birds of La Hesperia. I added 14 awesome pictures by Peter Capobianco (the same guy who shot the Cerulean Warbler nesting video) of some really cool birds like Toucan Barbet, Flame-faced Tanager, Blue-winged Mountain-Tanager, Red-headed Barbet, etc. They are all right at the beginning for easy viewing.

And finally here's an HD video of the White-rumped Sandpiper from today. Sorry for the wind noise! And you may want to skip ahead to 40 seconds when the Least Sandpiper shows up for good size comparison. Also around 53 seconds the bird ruffles its feathers briefly exposing its white rump.