BBBO
Indigo Bunting
Last Monday (May 6 th 2007) my field assistant and myself visited Braddock Bay Bird Observatory (BBBO) for a spontaneous fieldtrip. We always try to “guess” when the best day is going to be and we are always a day early or a day late of BBBO’s “BIG DAY”!! This year we were a day early but still had a wonderful trip and saw many great birds!
Northern Waterthrush
We started our adventure to Rochester New York around 4:45am where Young Naturalist J decided to sleep all but 20 minutes of our trip. Driving along Lake Ontario we didn’t take long to locate some Mute Swans (CHECK, first for 2007). We finally pulled up the BBBO and kindly greeted by their many volunteers. Had many wonderful birds and these below were some birds that I happen to write down in the notebook:
Sharp-shinned Hawk
| Ruby-crowned Kinglet | Blue Jay |
| Northern Waterthrush (2) | Veery * |
| Sharp-shinned Hawk (2) | Common Yellowthroat |
| Indigo Bunting (1) |
The Veery with a star (*) was a first for 2007 for me (CHECK).
Common Yellowthroat – Blue Jay
Things became very slow and we then decided to head over to the Braddock Bay Raptor Research banding station. Tomorrow I will do an additional post (with video) on what the hawk banders were able to capture!!
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Mon@rch's Nature Blog 
Those pictures! Those faces! This season! Woohoo!
10 May 2007 at 9:32 pm
Looks like a day early is still a great day! I love the close ups of these birds. They are so beautiful.
I look for bands on my backyard birds, so far I haven’t seen any.
10 May 2007 at 9:51 pm
I love them all, but that hawk wins the prize. Woohoo!
10 May 2007 at 10:26 pm
Great pictures and great day! That Sharpie is awesome! I don’t fancy trying to hold a Kinglet – my hands are too big or they’re too small!
10 May 2007 at 11:18 pm
Your close-ups are such a good chance for me to see details that I would never get to see in the wild. Thanks!!
11 May 2007 at 1:34 am
That sharpie is absolutely gorgeous! When he was banded were other birds being banded at the same time? And did they react to the sharpie’s presence at all?
11 May 2007 at 8:06 am
It must be amazing to see all of those species so closely. Amazing photographs.
11 May 2007 at 9:37 am
Wonderful pics! Awesome!
11 May 2007 at 11:51 am
Nice assortment of beaks!!
11 May 2007 at 1:25 pm
-I like the close-ups of the birds.-I’ll look forward to the video.
11 May 2007 at 1:36 pm
I agree with the others. The Sharpie portrait is awesome. The rest are pretty great too.
11 May 2007 at 4:52 pm
I’m having a second look at these awesome photos. Now a question. The Water Thrush looks so white – do the spots on the throat make the ID ‘Northern’?
12 May 2007 at 12:57 pm