A gorgeous day for birding, and 16 of us set out birding Irvine Nature Center on a Chesapeake Audubon field trip. One of the best highlights happened at the beginning--a Merlin looking to be chowing down on a bird at the top of a distant tree. The variety of birds was, I think, a little less than what it has been of late, but still a nice bunch of birds, some, the expected, in great numbers. 8 sparrow species, including a few Fox Sparrows. We enjoyed the music of a huge thick collection of Goldfinch we ran into at the end. One bush afforded us very long and very close studies of both kinglets (and their crowns) and yellow-rumped.
Some of the birds:
Black Vulture 6
Cooper's Hawk 1
Bald Eagle 1
Red-shouldered Hawk 1
Killdeer 1
Eastern Screech-Owl 1
Hairy Woodpecker 1
Merlin 1
Blue-headed Vireo 2
Red-breasted Nuthatch 1
Brown Creeper 1
Winter Wren 2
Golden-crowned Kinglet 12
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 40
Cedar Waxwing 22
Black-throated Blue Warbler 1
Palm Warbler 15
Yellow-rumped Warbler 15
Fox Sparrow 3
White-crowned Sparrow 8
Purple Finch 12
Pine Siskin 18
