Friday, January 1, 2016

FOY Birds

Many birders have a tradition of noting their First Of Year (FOY) birds seen.  I'm not sure why -- seems like there's an awfully high probability of this being a crow or a gull.  Apparently some folks think that the more interesting your FOY bird, the more interesting your birding year will be.   Nah, it's just the luck of the draw.

While dubious as to the worth of FOY birds, I can't help but notice which one I see on January 1.  Guess what?  It was a crow.  Now, if I hadn't glanced out my kitchen window this morning (crow flying overhead), and if I had waited just a few seconds to look out the front window (crow flying overhead...followed by NO CROWS for ages). then my FOY bird would have been an Anna's Hummingbird at my feeder.  Oh, well.

I think birders should just go for SOY (Second Of Year) birds instead.  I tried to do a mulligan for a FOY At The Fill, but when I got there, the first bird I saw was another crow.  The SOY At The Fill was a very nice Song Sparrow.  That suits me just fine.

It was in the 30s when Tru and I went to look at birds at the Fill around 9:30am:


We noted 27 species during our one-hour walk around the Loop Trail, many of them out on the lake.



About two-thirds of the way round, Truman expressed a desire to stop walking on the frozen path.  I had come prepared for this.


 It may be cold, but at least it's sunny!

1 comment:

  1. FOY = dark-eyed junco for me. The second was a crow. And my last bird of 2015 was also a crow. Crows, one might say, are trending. We went looking for Samish Flats today. I don't know if we ever found it but we did find a some half-frozen fields with a lot of harriers and a short-eared owl or two. I was quite content.

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