Every year around this very weekend, new birds return from a far-too-long hiatus. No matter how many months they’ve been away, their presence triggers tremendous excitement, inspiring rapt attention from coast to coast. That’s right… football season has finally begun. Go Cardinals, Ravens, Falcons, Eagles, and Seahawks!

Early fall in Western New York seems to be a fortuitous time to find Northern Mockingbirds, as I observed many more than usual this weekend. Corey’s Best Bird of the Weekend was any of the horde of Sanderlings he saw in the Rockaways on Saturday morning. Though he birded both mornings of the weekend, he couldn’t come up with anything spectacular so the always entertaining Clockwork Birds managed to squeak ahead of the American Oystercatchers for the honors.

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.