Birding

Best Bird of the Weekend (Third of December 2020)

December 21, 2020 by Mike 4 Comments

We’ve entered that most wonderful time of the year… that’s right, it’s Christmas Bird Count season! Whether you celebrate with others or observe in spiritual solitude, we hope you have a plan to enjoy holiday cheer the way only birders can.

After dipping twice on the errant Black-legged Kittiwake that’s been this week’s bird de jour in Rochester, I’ll designate Red-throated Loon my best of a beautiful but unsurprising bunch of birds. Corey enjoyed scouting the Queens CBC and then doing it on Sunday. It was an awesome count, despite the mid-week snow wiping out some of the lingering species. Easily his Best Bird of the Weekend, as it was so unexpected, was an Osprey that flew over the Edgemere Landfill, a most surprising bird in the northeastern United States in winter.

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.

best bird weekend

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.

4 Comments

Michael Ayers December 21, 2020 at 2:08 am

Red-Throated Bee-Eater
Wendy Feltham December 21, 2020 at 11:25 am

A Townsend’s Warbler, here on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state.
EDWARD A PULLEN December 21, 2020 at 12:10 pm

The only Iceland Gull (Thayer’s) of the South Kitsap CBC was my best bird of the weekend.
Paul Clapham December 21, 2020 at 1:05 pm

Our CBC was cancelled, but my wife and I went out to do a bit of birding in our usual part of the count area (before the rain started). Best bird of the morning: Red-throated Loon! I don’t ever remember seeing one of those on a CBC.