Why is camping so interesting? I ask because, despite my deep affection for warmth, indoor plumbing, and uninterrupted Internet access, I found myself and my family enjoying an overnight out of doors. Camping and birding both fall under the category of “nature” activities, yet the two seem only tangentially related. How many of you birders enjoy camping and how many of you would rather skip the whole thing?

After sleeping on the hard ground and waking to a frost-rimed world, I expected all manner of exotic avifauna as my reward. What I got were a few unexpected Pied-billed Grebes. Corey’s Best Bird of the Weekend was the third-from-last species to be added to his Big Sit total on Sunday afternoon, an amazingly cooperative Philadelphia Vireo that spent over an hour foraging around the Fort Tilden hawkwatch platform.

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.