 |
| 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.
 |
| Royal Tern |
 |
| Forster's Tern with Laughing Gulls |
 |
| Cinnamon Rock Pigeon |
 |
| Ruby-throated Hummingbird |
 |
| Common Ground-Dove |
And a Partridge in a Pear Tree? Stunning diving Tern!
ReplyDelete