{"id":7858,"date":"2018-02-18T15:59:24","date_gmt":"2018-02-18T20:59:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/?p=7858"},"modified":"2018-02-18T15:59:24","modified_gmt":"2018-02-18T20:59:24","slug":"weekend-report-02-18-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/?p=7858","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Report, 02\/18\/18"},"content":{"rendered":"
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~Northern Harrier hunting over a field in the Black Dirt, 02\/18\/18.~<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Until I started writing this post, I was feeling like my weekend of birding was a little bit on the hum-drum side. But looking back, I actually had some pretty good birds over the weekend, even if it wasn’t overly exciting. On Saturday morning, I made a quick stop at Glenmere Lake, following up on a report from Kathy Ashman of a Cackling Goose on the lake. When I arrived, nearly all the geese, including the Cackler, had already flown. The stop was still worthwhile, however, since I was able to see my first Green-winged Teals, Wood Duck, <\/strong>and Northern Pintails <\/strong>of the year. Then, I ventured back to the Hudson River, spending most of the day working my way from the Bear Mountain Bridge up to Newburgh and getting mostly the usuals. I went to Storm King State Park again, hoping the Golden Eagle would be present, but unfortunately it was not. I walked the trail for a good while, hoping that the bird might make an appearance; if it did I, missed it. There were many raptors in flight over the mountain, however; I had several Bald Eagles, a pair of Red-tailed Hawks, nearly 2 dozen Black Vultures and a couple of Turkey Vultures. I ended the day in the Newburgh Waterfront area, hoping for any interesting gulls. I struck out with the gulls, but thanks to birding bud Bruce Nott, I did get my first Orange County RED-BREASTED MERGANSER<\/strong> of 2018.<\/p>\n

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~An adult Bald Eagle did a relatively low flyover in the Black Dirt on 02\/18\/18.~\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I got out a little later than I should have on Sunday morning and missed the majority of the geese at Glenmere Lake once again. It was a good stop though, I picked up my first OC Ring-necked Ducks<\/strong> of the year and also had a female Red-breasted Merganser. I cruised the black dirt afterwards, hoping that the overnight snow would push some larks and buntings out to the roads. \u00a0This proved not to be the case and I actually had very few Horned Larks in my travel (just 2 flocks totaling approximately 70 birds). The highlight of my morning was watching the large flocks of mixed blackbirds (Red-winged Blackbirds, European Starlings, Brown-headed Cowbirds, and Common Grackles). There is something about large flocks of birds, watching them and hearing them is just fascinating. I tried for some pics, but mostly I was disappointed with the results. I ended the day with a nice, low-flying Bald Eagle which provided a decent photo op.<\/p>\n

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~Close-up of a flock of mixed blackbirds in the Black Dirt, 02\/18\/18.~\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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~Eleven Ring-necked Ducks at Glenmere Lake, 02\/18\/18.~\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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~One more shot of one of the mixed blackbird flocks. It was so much fun watching these birds. Black Dirt, 02\/18\/18.~<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Until I started writing this post, I was feeling like my weekend of birding was a little bit on the hum-drum side. But looking back, I actually had some pretty good birds over the weekend, even if it wasn’t overly exciting. On Saturday morning, I made a quick stop at Glenmere Lake, following up on … Continue reading “Weekend Report, 02\/18\/18”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,19,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-orangecounty","category-photos","category-raptors"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5i3kT-22K","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7858"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7867,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7858\/revisions\/7867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}