Photo of the Week: Greater Yellowlegs in Late Autumn

Medium-sized shorebird slowly walks through the grass along the shoreline.

On one of the last warm days of November in southeast Michigan, the Greater Yellowlegs feeding in the shallow waters of Washago Pond at Willow Metropark was a pleasant surprise for me this weekend.

And when I reported my sighting of the bird on eBird, it was flagged as a rare find for this time of the year.

I visited the pond because another birder reported finding a Cackling Goose, which I found as well.

Along with about 300 Canada Geese, almost two dozen Mallards, a couple Hooded Mergansers, and another surprise this late in the season: Yellow-rumped Warblers.

But I wasn’t expecting to find any shorebirds. Continue reading Photo of the Week: Greater Yellowlegs in Late Autumn

Photo of the Week: Third Annual October Big Day of Birding

chunky brown bird with brown smudges on white breast and thin white eyering perches on bare tree.

Hard to believe 2020 marks the third year of October Big Day, a global 24-hour event for birdwatchers around the world to watch and report all the birds they’ve seen.

This year had an added bonus for October Big Day, this weekend was also the first Global Bird Weekend.

I’ve participated every year and was happy it didn’t rain this year like it did for my first October Big Day in 2018.

Word has spread about the fun you can have birding!

The first year, over 13,000 people participated. In 2019, more than 20,000 people participated in Global Big Day.

And for 2020, I joined almost 29,000 people in submitting 66,843 checklists of 6,799 species (as of October 18, 2020 at 6:30pm Eastern Time). Continue reading Photo of the Week: Third Annual October Big Day of Birding

Photo of the Week: Purple Finch at Our Feeder

Raspberry-colored medium-sized bird perches on edge of green bird feeder.

“Wait a minute,” I said to my husband as I peered at the feeder in our side yard this weekend.

“That bird doesn’t look like the brown-colored House Finches.

It looks like it has a raspberry wash over it.”

And the other House Finches on the feeder didn’t seem very happy with it.

The raspberry-colored bird kept chasing the other birds away from the feeder. Continue reading Photo of the Week: Purple Finch at Our Feeder