Where the Birds Are

Here is the Bell's Vireo seen in Oakland County this weekend.  He spent his time foraging along the river and singing a muffled version of his song before finally right before we left a full blown warble.

Also had the Kent Co Yellow Rail tonight, great sounding bird but my recording equipment was dead so I don't have a recording!

 

Here is a picture of one of the 4 Bohemians that were at the Natural Science building in MSU.

An interesting Thayer's-type Gull at at that one pond whose name escapes me (near Belleville).


a male Varied Thrush in Muskegon County

This was a fairly distant shot so not the greatest of quality, but I am pleased it came out at all!

    Here are a couple of pictures taken of the Black-throated Gray Warbler found by Caleb Putnam on Wednesday, January 17th literally outside his office window (where the second picture was taken). Difficult lighting, freezing cold conditions, and a frustratingly active bird (but feeding well it seems) made it a challenging bird to get a clear look or even a picture of any quality.

Here are a couple photographs of the first record of Hoary Redpoll for Keweenaw County, Michigan. These two were found by Craig Bateman, David Pavlik, and Erik Enbody on January 13th while waiting (unsuccessfully) for the Black-billed Magpie to appear. A third Hoary was found between the Lac La Belle location and Copper harbor, this was a very strikingly white bird with hardly any visible streaks on the flanks. The two Townsend's Solitaires were seen well in Copper Harbor and I have attached a single photograph here as well-

Here is an image of an eider seen at the same location as the Common/Mew Gull below on the day before (1/1/07). We believe this bird is similar to a bird recently reported from Provincetown, MA as a Northern Eider (Somateria mollissima borealis) (photos of that bird below as well).

1/1/07 (Gloucester, MA)


1/4/07 (Provincetown, MA)


An good article from England concerning borealis-
http://www.birdsireland.com/pages/site_pages/features/eider/eider.html

Provincetown bird-
http://keenbirding.com/NEFall06/borealis281206.html

http://www.pavlikphotography.com/mew_gull.htm
(scroll to bottom)

Here is a photo of the American race of Common Eider (dresseri) also taken in Provincetown

 Here are several pictures of an adult Mew Gull found by Tim Snieder earlier this afternoon (January 2nd) at the Gloucester fish pier in Massachusetts. We would be very interested in any comments regarding the subspecies of this gull as we believe canus is the more expected, but we are not completely convinced this bird shows features diagnostic to this subspecies. We worry the amount of black on the primaries may not be extensive enough to rule out the western ssp brachyrynchus.

 

 

Photos of the Worm-eating Warbler seen briefly near the Peninsula Point (Delta County) water drip this morning, Sunday July 23rd. Evidence regarding the location of this bird is shown below the bird-







Above- Craig Bateman pointing to the branch that is shown in the foreground of the other photos, the bird is not in this picture.

Photo highlights from a very succesful trip to the UP in late June of 2006.