Well, my birthday was last week and I admit I took the opportunity to play the birthday card more than once. 🙂 We spend the holiday weekend back in my old stomping grounds of northern NJ. I ate several servings of dessert Friday night, went birding Sat morning and had a chance to visit with dear family and friends all weekend. What fun!
A visit to Scherman Hoffman Wildlife Sanctuary was at the top of the list. It’s one of New Jersey Audubon’s Centers, just minutes from my childhood home. They happened to be hosting a family nature walk Sat morn, so I dragged my boys and hubby to join me. We had a great time (see pics below) and since I hadn’t been north of my Maryland home since last year, I added black-capped chickadee to my Mom’s Big Year list. Yay!
Pileated woodpecker evidence
Tree swallows
My middle
My youngest
Eastern bluebird
The family walk begins
Scherman Hoffman is a special place to me. I clearly recall visiting when I was a high schooler, enjoying chats with the long-time director, Rich Kane, and asking Pete Dunne for advice on how to go about saving the last tract of woods in my hometown of Parsippany. In the late ’80’s, I took my first warbler ID course there. Great memories for sure.
This past week may have been Spring Break for the professor in me, but it was far from a break for the birder in me! It was ‘catch-up’ time….ticking birds for Mom’s Big Year! Fun!
My plans to get ahead on several weeks of class lecture prep went out the window, with local sightings of harlequin ducks and other fun birds posted Monday. There were several winter birds still out there on the coast of Maryland that I needed, so I sent a quick email out. Shortly after I sent it, I had several very kind offers from local birder buddies to get out in the field with me all over the state this week! Fun!
I’m still recovering… and soon you’ll know why..
Last Wed 1:11 am-bedtime…
followed by a 4:14 am wake-up for a trip to the Eastern Shore of Maryland to chase winter waterfowl for the day.
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I’ve got a whole lot to tell about some really fun birds, including a long-tailed duck and gannets!
Every night I sit at my laptop to write you all about it….. BUT I fall asleep… 🙂
Tonight as I tried to squeeze in the last moments of daylight… I was outside pruning the bushes(despite being completely overtired) and accidentally clipped a string of Christmas lights still hanging. Yes, you heard me, Christmas lights.. you can laugh now.. as the wreath is still up too! (So, perhaps it’s not TOO late for me to send out those holiday cards after all. LOL!)
..to participate in the 2016 Great Backyard Bird Count! Lots and lots of stuff keeping me hopping this week.. so I’ll write more soon. But I wanted to remind you all that this is happening NOW!
It’s a great opportunity for citizen scientists like you to share your bird sightings from your very own backyard! Who knows what you’ll see?! Feel free to share with us your favorite backyard visitors this weekend!
Well, now it’s time to play ‘catch up’. The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity with my trip to Florida, a BIG snowstorm here in the northeast and the start to the spring semester for my new environmental science class. All fun for me!
Florida was fabulous! The Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival was a hit on SO many levels! I had a great time working with Wildside Nature Tours to bring incredible birds together with equally amazing people! I led 5 straight days of field trips for the festival and truly had a blast! Each trip and its guides and participants were unique. Everyone was engaged and made it such a rewarding time for me. It’s always so much fun reconnecting and leading trips with old friends and colleagues and meeting lots of new friends too!
Here are some highlights:
The Lake Apopka crew on Sat had a blast in spite of mostly rainy day!
Wildside Nature tours at the booth.
Later gator!
White Ibis
Meeting Noah Strycker– who just set the new World Big Year record.
Coleading with Louise and Carlos for the Viera Wetlands trip- Always fun and such an honor leading with these two!
Great Egret
Fun at the trade show with Greg ‘Big Year’ Miller.
Little Blue Heron
Thrilled to be leading with Kevin Karlson- Here he is kicking off our shorebird field trip Thursday
Fun times and great birds with the Viera crew on Sunday
A billion tree sparrows at Viera
Leading the shorebird trip at Merritt with Michael and Raymond! Super fun!
Roseate Spoonbill
Common Loon
Scouting before Thursday’s trip
Wildside Nature Tours guides
The Dream Team at Merritt Island
Viera Wetlands with Louise and Carlos
Black Skimmers!
My flight home was cancelled on Sunday due to “Snowzilla”. We had 30″ of snow blanket our home in Maryland! As I was fretting and wringing my hands about my cancelled flight and the possibility that I might actually MISS my FIRST class of the spring semester/my new job (eeek!)… Skye, seabird counter extraordinaire, looked me square in the eyes and with his jovial smile said one word to me.
Lemonade.
That’s all I had to hear to give my attitude the 180 degree turn it needed. Cancelled flights yield more time for birding… and more birding I did! I took the extra time and thanks to fellow Wildside guide, Steve, had the great fortune of seeing a bird that I’ve been dreaming about seeing since I was 5 years old…. a male painted bunting!
Painted bunting, Photo credit http://www.finchforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=31115The first couple weeks of teaching my new class have been fabulous. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how incredibly motivated my UMBC students are!
This week on my day off, after getting the lunches packed and the kids off to school, I took a deep breath and realized it was the first day the house was quiet since my trip and after the kids had been home for 10 days straight due to the weather. It was a warm morning. The snow was covered by a thick blanket of fog as it started into a steady rain.. It was the PERFECT day to pull the covers back over my head and go straight to sleep again. And that I did.
By about 9:15 am I reached for my phone to check email as I was pondering all the things on the ‘to-do list’ that had been pushed aside in the whirlwind of activity these past few weeks. The mile-long list (including the unsent holiday cards!) made me pull the covers even higher over my head as I entertained the idea of another hour or two of sleep in my warm, cozy bed.. With the quiet in the house after all the hustle and bustle, some extra zzz’s were just way too tempting for this overtired mom.
A fellow local bird club member had just sent an email reporting 12 + Pine Siskins at his feeder. Knowing it was a bird I needed to see for the year and one that only came to feeders on occasion and could be missed…. I literally kicked my feet straight up in the air, covers flying off the bed and shot straight up. Fifteen minutes later, I arrived at his house and got the bird.
Pine siskin, courtesy of Jeff Culler
There was only ONE thing on this planet that could get me out of that bed that morning.
I just landed in sunny Florida for the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival! Special thanks to Kevin Loughlin and Wildside Nature Tours for bringing me down to lead field trips here for the next 5 days! So much FUN! I can’t wait!
Looking forward to seeing some great birds and meeting and reconnecting with lots of fun and exciting people on this first out-of-state trip for my ‘Mom’s Big Year’!
I bought this stone last spring, just after the Mom’s Big Year seed had been planted during a fun and inspiring conversation with Greg Miller*. I had time on my hands at that point.. enough time to pick this stone up and put it down 7 times before I finally decided to treat myself and buy it. Since then, my ‘Imagine’ stone has fueled dreams of flying off to far away and exciting places all over the country to see rare birds and equally exciting people.
I no longer have the luxury of extra time, as this week I begin prep for my first big trip of Mom’s Big Year. Now everything is kicking into gear.
Happy New Year! Wishing you all peace, health and joy in 2016!
It’s been a great start to Mom’s Big Year so far!
I kicked off January 1st doing what I’ll be doing a LOT of this year… …..Birding! (Just writing that puts a *huge* smile on my face.)
I joined 18 members of our local bird club at my favorite local spot, The Howard County Conservancy at Mt. Pleasant. Since Friday, a couple of exciting birds have appeared on the scene at various local hotspots, including a Ross’s Goose and a Redhead Duck- both unusual for our area! Check out the barred owl too!
Barred Owl, Photo by Howard Patterson with phonescope adapter
Mom's Big Year 