Busy as a Beaver

I was busier than the beaver to the left on the weekend of May 1-3 because I was at the Iowa Ornithologist Union meeting in Carroll, IA. We had a great time and overall 181 species were tallied. The highlight on the weekend came on Friday night. On the way to the meeting my dad and I stopped at a place called Hobb's Pitts. There was a Black-bellied Whistling Duck there the night before which is casual in Iowa and would be a new bird for my life list. My dad and I searched all around the pitts for the duck with no luck. As we headed back to the car I looked to the east and saw the bird flying! I wasn't able to get a photo of it but there was no doubt about what it was. It was life bird 306 for me and a neat one too.

The rest of the weekend was great aand we turned up lots of other neat birds. A few highlights included a Surf Scoter, Western Grebe, White-faced Ibis, Piping Plover, Yellow-billed Cuckoo, and Blue-headed Vireo. The biggest miss for me was the Western Sandpiper. I missed it by two minutes! I was litterally just hundreds of feet away from it and then it flew off. I can't complain though since I did see some other cool birds.

Here are some pictures I got during the weekend:

I got within 20 ft of this Western Grebe but I couldn't get a decent picture because the sun was behind it.

An American Bittern Playing hide and go seek.

A Double-crested Cormorant

An American White Pelican

A House Wren at my house before we left for the meeting.
I saved the best for last-the WORLD'S LARGEST POPCORN BALL

Snowy Plover!

At 5:30 this afternoon my birding friend called me with great news that a Snowy Plover, an casual bird in Iowa and a first for Woodbury County, was at the Dairy Ponds. I was ecstatic to hear that and I stopped what I was doing right away and my dad and I went down to see it. We were stuck behind a very slow truck going about 20mph for about 2 miles which made me very stressed. As soon as we got to the Dairy Ponds and I saw the plover however, the stress went away and I was back to normal, just more excited than usual. It was life bird 305 for me and a lifer for Paul! I will post pictures and more later on, time permitting.