Happy New Year to all my friends at
Three Sisters Adventist Christian School. I trust you all had a
great holiday with friends and loved ones and you are rested and
ready to continue with the Amazing Bird Race. Mrs. Sutherland and I
left Bend on Sunday December 28 and have been chased by bad weather
ever since. Cold and snow in Arizona where we were wearing shorts
and t shirts last year at this time. Thursday, We had to change our
plans as to which road I wanted to travel because I40 was closed for
90 miles due to ice and car/truck crashes. It's now Friday, and we
are now as far south as we can get in New Mexico spending the night
in Las Cruces.. It just stopped snowing. Tomorrow we hope to be
greeted with sunshine and head north to attempt to find a rare
European Crane that has been hanging out with thousands of Sandhill
Cranes in east New Mexico. More on that when and if we find them.
The first bird of the week for the new
year is a duck. This duck is normally found in Eastern Asia and
sometimes one strays to Alaska and as far south as California. We
stopped at Colusa National Wildlife Refuge north of Sacramento to see
this duck that has been spending the winter there for a couple of
years. This should be and easy ID, even though it is a casual
visitor to the US, it is in the Sibley bird book that I gave the
classroom. Sorry about the very windy video, remember the big winds
of about ten days ago? They caught up with us and the wind was
blowing about 35 miles an hour with gusts over 50 MPH. The duck was
hunkered down as you see in the first part of the video and did not
move for over an hour but it finally started to feed. Enjoy this
beautiful bird.
We will be in Texas next week and what
a bunch of wonderful birds await us. There should be some great
birds of the week coming up. The next post will have the new
additions to the list as it grows toward 300.
Happy Birding.
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| Bird of the Week in the company of a Greater White-fronted Goose |
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