Slow and steady... It's going to happen

We are 6 weeks away from the absolute start of spring migration insanity (Apr 24/25 time frame)... Although with the way the weather is going, who knows... The rarities on ebird are slowly starting to build as birds stir further south.

The most notable is this Neotropic Cormorant from Kansas, which has made an obvious jump north and east:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/opbirder/6974166779/in/pool-437129@N20/

Also a nice Yellow-headed Blackbird in NJ:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/larrybird13/6828588090/in/pool-437129@N20/


--- I really like my theory that a lot of vagrants from last fall/winter survived in the USA, and are now waiting to migrate awkwardly north into Ontario!

A Barnacle Goose was in Quebec on Mar 10...  Over the next 4-5 weeks, we can watch the steady stream of rarities build until they've practically surrounded Ontario in early/mid April.. Then finally spill the borders!

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A funny spam comment to a very old blog post:

http://www.blog.peregrineprints.com/2011/10/youre-starting-to-get-sore-throat.html?showComment=1331706945767#c1291086039296870043

This was a joke about pretending to get sick, right before a huge blow from the East (for Van Wagner's Beach lakewatching).. Although I guess the joke was lost on "sore throat remedies"... Unless it's actually some sort of corporate spam-bot preventing us from skipping work to go birding?!

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A fun post from Eastern Michigan (southern peninsula, not far from Lake Michigan):

All- Rick Brigham just called, 9:10AM, March 10, 2012, to report that at least 26 of the Ross's Goose candidates on 66th north of M-89 are pure Ross's Geese. This includes one apparent dark morph Ross's Goose with traits very supportive of pure Ross's Goose (Mallard sized, vertical bill/facial junction, no grin patch, etc.). There are also numerous hybrid/intergrade Ross's X Snow Geese with intermediate facial and body size characteristics. The actual number of pure Ross's Geese may be as high as 50, but the birds are often out of view and at distance, making accurate counting difficult.

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A bit of a ramble for today's blog post...

You'll notice I made a few changes to the blog recently. What do you think? Look better? Worse?

I've also added a fun feature on the side bar (right/bottom) that shows you a running list of updates from the blogs I read! I've been meaning to do this for a while, as there is a ton of great stuff there... Just finally got around to it.

Here's hoping to more of this over the next 4-5 days! :

The weather forecast is still looking extremely pleasant:

http://www.theweathernetwork.com/weather/caon0372?ref=topnav_weather_savedcity