Oh, its 2013? Year Birdz!

 The first scan of Tiscornia this year resulted in a Western Grebe! It spent some time at the end of the piers, before (atypically) swimming up the channel and hanging out in the harbor area. Word has it the Holland WEGR was present today, and I doubt its one of the 3 seen yesterday along the Indiana lakefront. So it seems there's at least five WEGR on the southish end of Lake Michigan right now (where is the Clark's?). 

  The first vestiges of a duck flock is finally starting to form, but numbers and variety is still low. New to it were three adult male WWSC.

 Gulls sucked today. The GBBG and GLGU's that have been present for over a week were no where to be found, and numbers in general were down from earlier in the week.

  Ice has yet to form on the lake, and until that happens things will continue to be slow out here.

      haha! photos = no writeup!

 

     crappy RBME photo

      People Of Tiscornia 2013

year-end scatterings

 Back in April this beast was on the beach for all of five minutes.

It probably would have caused quite the stir if it was in the first province east of Michigan.

Meanwhile at Tiscornia

The CBC is tomorrow, count week has al ready turned up a couple goodies.

Then its back to data and the report.

11/30/12 (hap hap happy)

Despite being mostly cloudy, today was a lovely day to end the season with. Code 2 SE winds, and a surprising mix of migrants.

Nov. 30 seems to be a good day for two species.

Not writeup birds though.

3 GADW
25 MALL
7 Scaup
11 LTDU
1 BUFF
1,641 RBME
82 RTLO (33 in the third hour, biggest flight of the season)
4 COLO
6 HOGR
1 RNGR (I had a RNGR here on Nov. 30 of last year too!)
1 LIGU (1st winter, out there aways. Oddly enough on Nov. 30 of last year I had a 1st winter LIGU here too!)
31 BOGU
1 LBBG (ad)
3 GBBG (2 ad, 1 first winter)

LALO and SNBU were flying south all day.

  I will no doubt have an assortment of totals and other interesting data up here sometime in the next week or two. Until then I will be enjoying sleeping in(!), entering data, writing the season's report, dealing with the local and state seasonal compilers, and wasting my time on writeups that will no doubt be rejected under the power of three veto vote.

11/29/12

Clear and warm, with S winds that peaked at a 4 before dying off in the late afternoon. 

A scope (not mine) almost blew into the lake (the pier is a dangerous place). 

The weather was nice!

But yeah, tomorrow is the last day of the count.

3 MALL

7 REDH

12 GRSC

15 Scaup

13 WWSC

1 BLSC

2 BUFF

1 COGO

291 RBME

2 RTLO

2 COLO

2 HOGR

1 AMCO

1 BOGU

1 GBBG (ad)

Yup, tomorrow is the last day of the count.

11/28/12

Mostly clear skies, and code 4 WSW winds.

Slow, really slow.

2 ABDU
14 MALL
38 REDH
17 WWSC
1 BLSC
2 BUFF
8 COGO
472 RBME
2 RTLO
1 COLO
6 HOGR
1 BOGU

On a brighter note, there are only two days left in the count.

11/27/12

Mostly cloudy skies and winds that started E at a code 2, then shifted to SW at 3 where they stayed for the rest of the count.

Only 24 count hours left in the season!

8 CANG
3 GADW
57 MALL
342 REDH
139 Scaup
25 WWSC
3 BUFF
12 COGO
4 COME
599 RBME (still haven't had a big flight yet this fall...)
1 RUDU
8 RTLO
4 COLO
3 HOGR
1 RNGR (flyby)
33 BOGU
1 BLKI (spent a few minutes offshore feeding on a dead fish) 

 quiz: what age is this Pacific Red-throated Loon?

A flower fearlessly attempts to bloom in November.....

flowers are dumb.