Jul 5, 2009

The Cape of Cod

Hi folks!

Sorry for the lack of posts recently-I guess I've had too much fun birding! I got out of school on May 29th (pretty early isn't it) and played around a bit and of course birded!

I went on a big banding trip to the Burrow Mountains in southwest New Mexico with my young birder friends Raymond and Michael to band Yellow-eyed Juncos and that was a great experience! I think we banded 2 or 3 Yellow-eyed Juncos and a bunch of other stuff! A cool thing with the juncos we were banding was that they were hybrids so some of them had brown eyes! We did get one classic YEJU that had the bright yellow eye-almost orange. I didn't get any pictures of banding but I might be able to get them from some other people who were on the trip.

Besides from that banding trip I went on a couple of Audubon trips. One was to Villanueva State Park which is southwest of Las Vegas. We didn't see much; Yellow-breasted Chats and a nesting pair of Red-tails. The Red-tails were awesome though, I got tons of pics and will get them on this blog ASAP. I saw the parents feed the babies a lizard and a mouse----pretty cool! About two weeks after the Villanueva trip we (my mom, my sister, our dog Zia and I) packed up our tiny little Prius and drove to Cape Cod, Massachusetts! It was a bit of a tight fit but we managed. We bought some fireworks for Fourth of July in Missouri (about the last state east of Ohio where you can buy fireworks) and listened to The Hithhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on the way east! The trip took us 4 days and we slept in kinda bad hotels except for the night in Missouri.

We got to Cape Cod on July 1st and the vey next day I went on a fishing trip with two of my uncles. We caught 7 fish altogether (6 Striped Bass and 1 Bluefish) and put all but one the freezer-the other one we baked and had for dinner. Oh the taste of fresh bass...
I've gotten a birding trip in too since we got here. On Saturday the 4th I birded around Race Point with my old bird club leader! We saw about 50 species including 4 lifers for me: Parasitic Jaeger, Long-tailed Jaeger, Lesser Black-backed Gull, and Roseate Tern! Scott (that's my old leader) was especially excited about the 10,00 shearwaters we saw right from the beach! He said that that was the most shearwaters he'd ever seen from shore! We got our feet wet and a little cold but it was all worth it. Our list of species is below. On the night of the 4th we went to a friends house where we could see most of the Cape from their porch! We set off some fireworks and overall had a good time!

Here is the list from Race Point and Hatches Harbor on the trip with Scott:

Red-breasted Merganser (1)

Cory's Shearwater (2,000)

Greater Shearwater (6,000)

Sooty Shearwater (300)

Manx Shearwater (2)

Northern Gannet (1)

Double-crested Cormorant (3)

Green Heron (1)

Turkey Vulture (3)

Red-tailed Hawk (1)

Piping Plover (1)

Parasitic Jaeger (2)

Long-tailed Jaeger (1)

Laughing Gull (1,000)

Bonaparte's Gull (200)

Ring-billed Gull (2,000)

Herring Gull (500)

Iceland Gull (3)

Lesser Black-backed Gull (4)

Great Black-backed Gull (50)

Black-legged Kittiwake (5)

Royal Tern (1)

Roseate Tern (3)

Common Tern (1,000)

Artic Tern (20)

Least Tern (30)

Black Tern (1)

Eastern Kingbird (1)

Blue Jay (5)

American Crow (5)

Carolina Wren (2)

American Robin (3)

Gray Catbird (20)

Northern Mockingbird (6)

Cedar Waxwing (2)

Common Yellowthroat (1)

Eastern Towhee (4)

Song Sparrow (1)

Red-winged Blackbird (5)

Common Grackle (15)

Baltimore Oriole (2)

House Finch (3)

Pine Siskin (3)

American Goldfinch (5)

House Sparrow (10)




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