Wednesday, January 3, 2018

Well we are just rolling into the New Year.

January 1st we were in a very cold Delaware. Not as cold as Michigan, but way colder,  for a longer period of time, than Delaware is supposed to be.

We spent most of the New Year’s Day daylight hours birding with Anita. Because of the  wicked cold we were mostly hopping in and out of the car. At one point we were on the jetty rocks at Indian River Inlet, hoping to see a greater cormorant and a common eider.  A right nasty wind made the cold even worse. The conditions were bad enough that this  may be the first time I have ever been there and there were no fishermen. Standing on  the rocks was a major challenge. The wind was so bad that it knocked over the tripod  holding the scope. The scope went flying off the tripod and landed between some of the jetty rocks. A bit banged up but it still works. We got a very quick glimpse of the birds,  plus a few others like long-tailed duck, purple sandpiper, sanderling, and ruddy  turnstone and did a quick retreat to the car. We were out for maybe 15 minutes and it  felt like my sinuses froze up. I couldn’t breathe through my nose for about 10 minutes  after getting into the car.

We ended the daylight hours at Fowler Beach getting great views of short-eared owls. All  old we got 46 species to start the year. Nothing close to what we could have gotten on a  normal Delaware New Year’s Day, but not bad.

Great blue heron from December 30, before it got really nasty cold.

January 1st Yellow-rumped warbler, puffed up to stay warm.

Yellow-rumped warbler, checking us out.

Thousands of snow geese. These birds shimmer in the right light. This is a common sight  in winter Delaware but I don’t tire of it.

Why you don’t look up into a flock of flying snow geese. Especially with your mouth  open.

After seeing the short-eared owls we drove up to Pennsylvania to spend the night at Lynn’s house in Jonestown. Yesterday was the long drive back to Michigan and today was  the required catching up on everything that has been ignored for the past 12 days.  And now it’s time for the rest of the year.