Have you ever found yourself unable to pack properly for a trip because you can’t conceive of conditions dramatically different from the ones you were experiencing in the moment? What I mean here is the way the memory of desert heat becomes impossible to evoke in the depth of winter, or how that same bone-chilling cold is forgotten during a hot and muggy city summer. Forgetting how one feels in certain conditions and thus failing to prepare accordingly can lead to a lot of suffering.

This question came to mind as I rapidly fled Island Cottage Woods this weekend. Apparently, since I haven’t yet encountered mosquitoes this summer, I forgot that they existed. This deplorable lack of foresight landed me in an environment with plenty of resident birds that I was utterly unable to watch while being slowly drained of my lifeblood by swarms of ravenous bugs. But where you find flies, you find flycatchers and I found plenty. My favorite was an Acadian Flycatcher feeding its fat fledgling. Corey’s Best Bird of the Weekend was a Barred Owl he heard calling shortly before midnight on Saturday night when he and Daisy took a walk at his folks’ house in Saugerties, New York. Something about the sound of a Barred Owl calling from dark woods is just perfect.

How about you? What was your best bird of the weekend? Tell us in the comments section about the rarest, loveliest, or most fascinating bird you observed. If you’ve blogged about your weekend experience, you should include a link in your comment.

Written by Mike
Mike is a leading authority in the field of standardized test preparation, but he's also a traveler who fully expects to see every bird in the world. Besides founding 10,000 Birds in 2003, Mike has also created a number of other entertaining but now extirpated nature blog resources, particularly the Nature Blog Network and I and the Bird.