christmas birding in CT

I had a few days of birding opportunity in Connecticut this past week.  Folks had been reporting Razorbill's in fairly good numbers for all of December on Long Island Sound, so I birded with Beth and my sister and her boyfriend.  We couldn't turn up any Razorbills.  Weather was poor, visibility was pretty low, and the barometric pressure was dropping - the birds were settling down.  

We didn't see any Razorbill, but were able to get great looks at Golden Eye, Long Tailed Ducks, Red Breasted Merganser's, and lots of Brandt and Common Loon.

We were able to add the following birds to the year list:

Common Merganser (414)

Pine Warbler

Red Crossbill

Winter Wren

Boat Tailed Grackle (418)

Also, Pete saw a Brown Headed Nuthatch in Alabama.  

Below is a male Long Tailed Duck that had been blown into a tree during a storm on the previous night.  It was laying in that puddle of cold water when I came across it.  Intensely beautiful bird. 

Birds

Hey guys,

I have been birding.  A lot of new birds for me, but not any new ones for our year list.  Liz also got a new camera and lens, which has been fun to play with.  Some photos are below.

The first set of photos came from our trip to Santa Cruz Island (home of the endemic Island Scrub-Jay, which Matt got earlier in the year).  That was the main target, and we saw about a dozen or so of them on our three days there.  I also got to see an endemic sub-species of Loggerhead Shrike, and an endemic Island Fox.  Perhaps the most exciting bird out there was a Summer Tanager, which is listed as only a vagrant on the island.

On the way out, there were plenty of Common Murres and Black-Vented Shearwaters.

The day after we got back, I was able to see a Painted Redstart and Summer Tanager that have been at a park near Pasadena.

And most exciting for me were some UCR birds this week (although I didn't have the camera).  I was looking for a wintering Verdin, which I was able to find.  But along the way I found a Green-Tailed Towhee.  This was exciting for me because last year, after the Verdin was reported, I went to find it and found both the Verdin and the Towhee.  But the Towhee was my first time finding a rare bird (or at least rare for the area), and since nobody was able to relocate the bird, I had begun to doubt whether I actually saw it over the last year.  So I nearly flipped when I saw the bird this week, back for its second winter.