Birding in My Yard and Away

My mind has been spinning these last few days. So much is going on and I have several bird trips coming up. It's less than one month until the Cape May Autumn Weekend and the First Birder Blogger Conference. This will be my first out of state birding festival and I'm getting more excited by the day. I've started making mental lists of what I need to bring. I'm hoping to learn lots from great birders but really what excites me the most is meeting the bloggers that I've gotten to know. My air and hotel reservations are made, the car rental taken care of, and my confirmation for the weekend events came in the mail yesterday. It's not too late to join us!

Tomorrow is my birthday and Art is taking the day off work to take me birding. There are a couple of local spots that I've wanted to visit and I'm really looking forward to spending some time outdoors, just the two of us. Tomorrow evening we have a wedding to attend. It will be Art's oldest nephew and the first of our kids' generation to marry. Everyone got new outfits for the occasion. There's a dinner and dance but I won't be staying up too late because Saturday morning I'm headed up to Duluth with a group being led by Sharon the Birdchick and Stan Tekiela. If the weather is good we'll be going to the hawk banding station that Sharon's been posting about and if the weather is poor we'll check out the migration along the lake. Either way it should be a blast!

Who's this little guy? I've had lots of warblers eating insects in my back yard this last week. My frustration level goes through the roof trying to id these green/gray/yellow twitchy birds.

Maybe if I look upside down...

Ahhh... a bird I CAN id! A pair of Red-bellied Woodpeckers turned up yesterday. I heard their distinctive call long before I saw them. There are usually one or two that winter in my neighborhood and make frequent visits to the suet and Zick dough. Speaking of Zick dough, my local grocery store finally got their shipment of corn meal. It was impossible to find here for the last month. Any ideas why? Their warehouse said they'd heard it was because distributors were getting more for selling their corn for ethanol production.

Mmmm...tasty!

I bought enough corn meal to make Zick dough throughout the winter.

Here is a super frustrating moment in warbler watching. This grassy area was vibrating with twitchy warblers. I could not get a picture so finally I decided to focus on the yellow leaf and see if maybe a bird would hop into my focus. No luck. Or at least I didn't think so until That is I uploaded this picture and zoomed in to check it out further.

Take a picture- it lasts longer!

Look! It's another green/gray/yellow bird that I can't id!

Cute though...