AZFO Meeting

I had eagerly signed up for the AZFO meeting in Lake Havasu when I heard that there was a Friday afternoon boat trip on the lake before a day of presentations on Saturday and a choice of trips on Sunday morning. But the lack of many interesting sightings before the event couple with falling behind with things at work, I decided I would go for the 'pelagic' and return on Saturday. But on reaching a windy Lake Havasu City, I was not surprised to hear the boat company had canceled. I went to Rotary Park with a group, but with high winds and few birds I headed home. Six hours of driving for 90 minutes of bad birding - an experience worse than chasing and dipping on a rarity! A good day's working would have been better. We did find an immature California Gull with a deformed bill.

California Gull

Washington DC

I had a two day trip to Washington DC in which there was little opportunity to bird. I decided to simply walk around the park close to my hotel with 3 possible targets. I did well finding Carolina Wren and Tufted Titmouse but could not find Carolina Chickadee.

Tufted Titmouse

Chicago

A short trip to Chicago allowed for a long morning's birding on the Saturday and some casual birding on the iit campus. Campus brought me a surprise bird on Friday October 12th when a Winter Wren hopped around our feet as we headed for a late lunch.

Saturday was the planned birding day and Pat picked me up from my hotel to join the Wooded Island field trip as I had done a year ago. I picked up several expected species such as Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Downy Woodpecker, Golden-crowned Kinglet, Palm Warbler and White-throated Sparrow but I saw some that I did not expect such as Gray Catbird, Eastern Towhee and especially Red-bellied Woodpecker, while a flock of Pine Siskins was more interesting to the others than to me! Dark skies and some drops of rain brought Chimney Swifts down to eye-level.

Hermit Thrush

White-throated Sparrow

Following this trip, we were joined by top birder Randy and we headed out to McGinnis Slough where we saw many ducks, including Black Duck, and a new ABA for me in Mute Swan. I had seen them before in Ottawa but these were 'gifts from the Queen' and not allowed to count. We also had an American Toad on our walk back to the car and a  Blue Jay from the parking lot as we were about to leave.

American Toad

A trip to see the excellent Extreme Mammals exhibit at the Field Museum on Sunday ended with a surprise Blackpoll Warbler feeding on berries on the ground close to Buckingham Fountain. On Monday and I heard and then saw two Monk Parakeets on the iit campus. These were officially lifers for me although I had seen the colony of these birds in Casa Grande, AZ in 2009. Those birds were also uncountable.

Blackpoll Warbler

Half Moon Bay Pelagic

Although I finally met Debi Shearwater, the weekend's second pelagic was not as good as the first. This was a 10 hour trip but following a sighting of Marbled Murrelets as we left the harbour, began with a straight 2 hours into the Pacific in which we saw very little. The real highlight was getting great views of all four skuas - South Polar Skua and Pomarine, Parasitic and Long-tailed Jaegers. We saw a couple of Northern Fulmar, had a couple of brief sightings of storm petrels and came across an area with many phalaropes on the water. We did not see any cetaceans but Northern Fur Seal was a new mammal for the weekend.

Black-footed Albatross