Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Life-bird




We birders are always trying to add to the list of birds we have seen during the course of our lives. For obvious reasons, these are known as "life-birds". For those of us who take this far too seriously, we travel around the state and further in search of reported birds which will be additions to our list. Today was one of those days. Two birds not on my list were reported in my home county of Orange and in neighboring Sullivan county. I've spent three days skulking around the reported site of a Hoary redpoll with no results, but I did manage to bag the Pine grosbeak and capture some images of this new lifer. Both of these birds are normally not found in New York, but a shortage in the pine cone production in Canada and points north has forced these avian visitors to journey much farther south than normal and into our neighborhood. We did get some nice looks at Bald eagles again today, another visitor from the north. Tomorrow, we'll trek out in yet another attempt for the redpoll.....wish us luck.

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