Forty, Count 'em 40!

This Sunday, moving into the 2nd week of May, the birds are really starting to move in now. After birding now for close to 5 years I can now tell you that the very best two weeks of the entire year are the first two weeks in April. So I set out today with one goal in mind –to see if I could spot 40 different species of birds. For a newbie like myself I think this is a decently high number. I know people who have been bird watching for many many years could probably tip 60 or even 70 this time of year, but again I figured 40 was a challenging but possibly attainable number for me at this point. After my first bird being a Brown-headed Cowbird, I was a little hesitant but some very nice birds came quickly thereafter including a Blue-headed Vireo which is a bird I only see maybe once or twice a year if I'm lucky. Warblers could be found plentiful today and I counted 8 species of Warbler alone which is a pretty good number. Some of the better photos I managed to get of the Warblers today were this Yellow Warbler and then later a Palm Warbler. Last year I had a day when I tallied 9 Warblers which is my best record for a single day. And can you guess what day that was? Well it just happened to also be May 11th of 2013! There were a few birds that I counted today that I never saw, but had an unmistakeable call such as a Ring-necked Pheasant and a Sora. Other than those two, I physically saw the others and tried to get at least one photo of each so as to help me remember them when I got home. Another of the nicer photos I got today was of a fairly common bird, a Gray Catbird. I guess I like it because you can see some of the feather details and also part of the "chestnut" colored patch under his tail. There was just a LOT of movement going on today so instead of spending a long while chasing one bird for a good photo, I was more concerned about keeping moving and catching even a short glimpse of as many birds as possible. But one bird I did stop and chase for a bit was this Common Grackle. And that would probably seem odd to most bird watchers as they are a very common (as their name suggests) and easy bird to find. But I'm so fascinated by the blue-ish purple iridescent coloring on their head that I keep trying to convey that in a photo. This one kind of worked that way but there were some twigs that created a blur in the foreground. Some of the more fun birds to see today included a Northern Flicker, Baltimore Oriole and Rose-breasted Grosbeak. There was even a Bald Eagle who flew over carrying a long trailing clump of nesting material! All in all I took about 126 photos and spent a total of 4 hours and 10 minutes making my way around the park. The last image I want to share from the day is this one of 3 drake Mallards in the pond near the east parking lot. I thought it was just such an interesting sight with the water reflecting a nice tan color that felt like Springtime to me. When I got home I used my photo to double-check my own memory and had tallied exactly 40 different birds! Since having put so much effort into it, I decided to report my findings "officially" on ebird which is an online data collection system put together by the Audubon Society and The Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I've only used it a few times now and like many tools it offers endless ways to report and track birds around the country. Without having to log in or anything, you can see my total checklist for today here: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S18345635