Trip Recap

What a weekend!

This post is just a quick catch-up, I have a bunch of pictures to continue to process, but I wanted to get a quick post up; then I can try to put some posts together that will help me share, and remember some of my lessons learned from the trip. I hope that a bit of time spent planning the posts will be worthwhile, rather than just throwing together picture posts which would be about all I could manage at the moment.

First off, I encourage anyone, who like myself considers them self to be on the beginning side of birding rather than the 'advanced', to seek out an opportunity to bird with a diverse group of birders in your area.

I had a blast, met many great people, and as I expected saw some great birds. I think that in many ways this past weekend removed my last vestiges of being an outsider to the birding community. I'll have more thoughts on that in some future post, along with some of my impressions that I took away with me. For now though, a quick recap of my birding numbers. I am including my own numbers from Thursday evening, because for me they were all a part of the trip.

During the 4 days I went on 4 trips, submitted 7 checklists, that covered 2 states, 3 counties, and a range of elevation from 5003 to 10,276ft. I saw 113 species, which included 11 that I was able to add to my lifetime list. Perhaps most significantly though, I woke before 6am on 6 out of the past 8 mornings. That last one is just scary!

New species I added:

Least Flycatcher

MacGillivray's Warbler

American Three-toed Woodpecker

Cassin's Finch

Cordilleran Flycatcher

Pine Grosbeak

Willett

Virginia Rail

McCown's Longspur

Marsh Wren

American Redstart

Some of those have post-able pictures to go along with them, and other well-known species were just too photogenic to pass up, (like the Audubon's Yellow-rumped Warbler above), so check back over the next few days to see what may be turning up. I knew coming in that I would be seeing new species, but had no idea just how many I would be adding. The whole experience was one that exceeded my expectations, and one that I hope to participate in again soon.

2010 Count: 173
Lifetime: 229