BirdingGirl

Magnolia warblers are my FAVORITE warbler (well, aside from Blackburnian Warblers, but I've only seen one once at Mt. Auburn Cemetery). I don't know what it is- the name maybe? "Magnolia" has such nice connotations. And the coloring- I love the yellow with black streaks, and the gray. All the colors come together so nicely. I decided to look it up on Allaboutbirds.org to see if they had any information about where the name comes from- apparently the name was originally given to them in 1810 by Alexander Wilson who saw one in a Magnolia tree. Funnily enough he took the Black and Yellow Warbler English name, and added Magnolia to its Latin name, which became the predominant name over time. We went to visit Steve's parents in Fairfield, CT the weekend of May 22-23 so of course I was on high alert for warblers. I noticed the Cedar Waxwings first. They were flying between the trees in his parents' backyard and the top of a dead tree in his neighbor's yard: I...

Back in mid-May Steve had an off-shore trip to Georges Bank. He's a marine biologist and goes off-shore at least a couple times a year. He and his co-worker Dave got some great pictures of the birds they saw while out there. Georges Bank itself is about 60 miles offshore, and then the area itself is 150 miles long by 75 miles wide. For more info: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Georges_Bank Apparently they get a lot of avian ocean hitch-hikers , which I think is a great term for it, although not widely used. Sometimes birds get blown out to sea in a storm and are exhausted and need to stop and take a rest. As you can see, they picked up a migratory warbler, and they also had an Eastern Kingbird stop to take a rest. They also saw plenty of pelagic birds. I wrote another post earlier this week about what I believe to be an Audubon's Shearwater . Can anyone help on this I.D.? Unfortunately this storm petrel (I believe a Wilson's Storm Petrel- the one most commonly s...

I made a return trip to Mt. Auburn Cemetery Sunday to see if I could spot the Summer Tanager and identify the small gray bird I saw in the apple tree up by the tower. I got a late start and arrived around 1:30pm. I went up Indian Ridge first and saw the following birds: Female Parula Black and White Warbler Black-throated Green Warbler Then I cut back along the path below Indian Ridge and then went over by the sphinx and the chapel. There I saw a: Female American Redstart Then I took a walk up Laurel Ave and the circle at the top turned out to be a great spot! Since there were so many many people birding and walking around I wanted to go somewhere quieter in the hopes of seeing some interesting birds. Sure enough, there was no one else up there and I was able to observe a variety of warblers and several Chipping Sparrows. Here are some that I captured: Chipping Sparrow American Redstart (including birds found in other locations) Black-throated Blue Warbler As I got closer to the ed...

I truly enjoyed my day out with members of Gordon's Gaggle during the 2008 MassAudubon Bird-a-thon. I learned so much about ID-ing birds, got out to a great birding spot, and even got a few pictures for my blog. I planned to meet the team at Mt. Auburn Cemetery at 9:00am. They were running a little late (good birding in Medford) so I spent the first hour by myself, which was good since it gave me some time to explore on my own. It was an exciting place to be during the Bird-a-thon. There were birders everywhere with their Swarovskis, huge scopes and tripods. I went down to a quiet shaded area where I spotted some Chipping Sparrows and also some black and white warblers w/yellow. At this point I was just practicing using my binoculars and didn't get any pictures so I quickly forgot what they looked like. At 10:00 I met the two members of the group assigned to Mt. Auburn Cemetery and they took me up Indian Ridge right away. There was unbelievable activity up there. There were so ...