Yard birding : April 4th

  Yesterday turned out to be quite a productive skywatch day in my yard and I added a few birds to my yearlist. The conditions looked decent (warm weather & wind with a south component), so I woke up before sunrise and walked out into my yard. It was overcast and after half an hour of looking up it became clear that this wasn't a good day for morning flight. I was already up though, so I stayed out and birded for another hour. It was fairly quite, but I did have a few good birds (listed below)

- Wood Duck
- American Black Duck (decent for the yard)
- American Wigeon (yard FOY)
- Common Merganser
- Wilson's Snipe (FOY)
- Great Blue Heron

- American Wigeon 

- Wood Ducks 

I then walked down my road to "Kiah's Marsh" to see if anything was around. It was kind of quiet, but I did get my first Swamp Sparrow of the year. It was 10:30 when I got back to the house and the sun had just come out, so I decided I might as well try a hawkwatch for a bit. That ended up being a good decision and what started out as a dark, gloomy day turned into my best skywatch day this year. On top of the 81 raptors (counting Turkey Vulture) that I saw, I also had some other good birds for the yard. Highlights listed below;

- 10 American Black Duck
- 1 Gadwall (yard lifer!)
- 6 Sandhill Crane
- 3 Killdeer
- 1 Common Loon (yard FOY)
- 53 Turkey Vulture
- 2 Northern Harrier
- 3 Sharp-shinned Hawk
- 2 Cooper's Hawk
- 1 Northern Goshawk
- 13 Bald Eagle
- 1 Red-shouldered Hawk
- 6 Rough-legged Hawk
- 1 Belted Kingfisher
- 1 American Kestral
- 3 Brown-headed Cowbirds (somehow my first ones this year).

Some pictures..

- American Black Duck, Mallards and Gadwall

- Mallards, American Black Ducks and Gadwall

- Common Mergansers

- Distant Common Loon

- Sharp-shinned Hawk 

- Sharpie

- Turkey Vulture 

- Northern Goshawk 

- goshawk vs eagle

- Bald Eagle

- Bald Eagles 

- Rough-legged Hawk

- Common Raven & Rough-legged Hawk 

 I ended up at 57 species for the day, not bad for staying in my yard. Added 6 birds to the yard yearlist, which brings me up to 64.