Birding November 2014
November was pretty slow about my 2014 year birds. One of the reason was that I couldn't get out enough to look for them, too much tied up with my daily work.
Sunday, November 23 I got the message from David Foster that 5 White-fronted Geese and Snow Goose were at M&M Dairy field. I checked the field out, but couldn’t locate them. I drove to Sheffield Park and noticed Dave standing near the road and looking something. I stopped and rolled down the window: “Anything interesting?”
He was just steering me like couldn’t believe what I was saying. Finally he said: “Turn around!”
I turned my head and there were 4 Snow geese in a pond. Wow! Somehow I didn’t see them when I was driving in. 3 were dark morphs and one white one. Very nice.
After taking some pictures and talking with other birders who came to see the Snow Geese, I drove back to M&M to find the White-fronted Geese.
I scanned the field back and forth till I saw them way back on a field. Greater White-fronted Goose is a new county bird and the lifer for me, glad to add them to my list.
I also checked out Perdue Rd. Pond to see, if any new ducks have showed up. A pond hosted two or three hundred Canada Geese, some Northern Pintails, Ring-necked Ducks, couple of Ruddy Ducks, 8 American Wigeons and lots of mixed in Mallards.
Two of the Mallards got my attention, male and female. They stayed out of crowd, fully alerted. You could see clearly difference between them and other Mallards. These Mallards had very pure strong natural colors. Head was more buffy and all colors were right. I took some photos and and marked them down as wild Mallards. I didn’t have Mallard in my 2014 year list, so now this vacancy is fixed.
Couple of days later I did some birding in Huguenot Park. It was low tide and lots of shorebirds were pretty far out by the water line, but one bird got my attention. As soon as I raised binoculars I saw that it was an American Avocet, not a Black-necked Stilt what came to my mind first. He was alone and after little while moved closer to me, so that I could snap some better photos. This is always a treat to see this bird. I been out birding specifically for this bird for many times this year whenever somebody saw it.
That’s it for November. I added 4 new birds to my 2014 year list which brought my 2014 county list up to #246. Last year I ended up with 241 birds. It's still November, hopefully December will bring some more, if I only have enough time to go look for them.
New yearbirds in November:
- Greater white-fronted Goose - M&M Dairy Field - 23 Nov. 2014
- Snow Goose - Sheffield Park - 23 Nov. 2014
- Mallard - Perdue Rd. Pond - 23 Nov. 2014
- American Avocet - Huguenot Memorial Park - 27 Nov. 2014
Full list of my 2014 Duval County Year Birds - 248 species
