Birding in Georgia

Northern Cardinal 

Female Northern
Cardinal

As you may or may not have noticed my favorite bird is the Northern Cardinal!!! What's yours?

Pine Warbler

Yesterday as we were headed to Macon, GA we stopped along the way at a Marathon gas station to bird. At first all we saw were Northern Cardinals flying around, but then we heard another call. That turned out to be a Pine Warbler. Another lifer for us! At first  it was along the fence but then it must have felt like we were to close as it flew up into the trees! Such a beautiful warbler. We have go to find more warblers if we are going to hit our goal of 400; I'm a little excited about birds today even though we didn't go birding today, but I just got done watching THE BIG YEAR!! I really love that movie! Alright so anyways, as we were taking shots of the Pine Warbler Simon thought he heard a Black-crested Titmouse; the only problem with that is we are about a thousand miles out of range. We have seen birds out of range before but this guy or gal turned out to be a Tufted Titmouse that we already got for this year. We started to make our way for the tree line behind this gas station and that's when a Northern Mockingbird flew in and landed on this pile of dead trees. He let me get pretty close and managed to get a great shot of a very common bird! I sometime wonder what these birds are thinking, I wonder if they know they are so envied by humans.

Northern Mockingbird

I mean wouldn't it be great to be able to fly anywhere you pleased and not have a care in the world. As Simon walked around the pile hoping for a thrasher of some kind, but no thrasher just some Chipping Sparrows, another for our big year!
Next we spot all kind of bird activity as we approach the tree line. There's Eastern Bluebirds, sparrows, Northern Mockingbirds, Cardinals, Pine Warblers and an another new bird Brown-headed Nuthatch! We now have all the nuthatches for this year! We are taking pictures of all this birds flying from branch to branch and really enjoying the moment when I think I spot a Red-headed Woodpecker. I try and focus in on him and I miss it. Unsure of the ID of the woodpecker we are also unable to count him in our big year. This is not the first time the Red-headed Woodpecker has slipped through our viewfinder, in Iowa we believe we saw him there and couldn't find him again. But this year is far from over and we will get him!
We watch a Pine Warbler jumping from branch to branch and then a Brown-headed Nuthatch flies in and chases the warbler away. Must have been the warblers branch! So that birding trip brings us up to 129! Tomorrow we plan on stopping along the way to Texas we will be driving through some swamp land and hoping for some new birds. I hope we have a good report of birds tomorrow for you all. Happy Birding!!

Eastern Bluebird

Brown-headed Nuthatch