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Royal Tern |
Yesterday morning I arrived in Cocoa at 5am for the Cocoa Christmas Bird Count. This is my second year participating, and it's always a lot of fun. We were out from about 6:30am to 6:30pm, counting all the birds we could find our area. Easily the biggest highlights for me were seeing a White-winged Scoter, the first I've seen in Florida, and a Common Loon, the first for me this year in Florida. We saw about 18,000 scaup, and while most all of them were Lesser Scaup, I found one Greater Scaup in my photos among the rafts of Lessers. There were also huge numbers of Laughing and Ring-billed Gulls, American Robins and Yellow-rumped Warblers. But we also saw several species that are unusual for that area, even though they're common elsewhere. In particular, our group was excited to see Tufted Titmice and a couple House Finches. Other highlights for me were seeing 4 Painted Buntings, 8 Horned Grebes, 2 Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, 1 Northern Harrier, 4 Chipping Sparrows, and at least 20 Cedar Waxings. And oddly, a Rock Pigeon was pretty interesting. It was a cinnamon-colored variety that I've never seen before.
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Royal Tern |
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Forster's Tern with Laughing Gulls |
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Cinnamon Rock Pigeon |
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Ruby-throated Hummingbird |
![Photo & Video Sharing by SmugMug Photo & Video Sharing by SmugMug](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uC1YOMxDNgccgOcIJ7VjD1z6zAkxzBC6GoQcOshXxneiGJ7Jcj3yhSEOLdAlzOz48zwI1QbuMNIQniuipreOdFq0L7tF8O-chtK01FDKz_739mHexVX97Q-nmgzHWzM7QRvnw7akWhiVpdp-IVkql7c34vcMqaKHCW0Yw=s0-d) |
Common Ground-Dove |
And a Partridge in a Pear Tree? Stunning diving Tern!
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