110/10 Big Year Update: 1st 2 weeks of February

After a very active January, the first two weeks of February were really slow birding.  I did not do much birding, to be honest, and only add one more species, Caribbean Martin (Progne dominicensis) to the 110/10 Big Year list.

The Goal for Next Two Weeks

Two rare birds were reported in the last two weeks. A Reddish Egret (Egretta rufescens) by the Belleplaine Bridge, Belleplaine St. Andrew reported by Ian Glaves a visitor from the UK on the Birds of Barbados, Facebook Group.  The second bird, Great Kiskadee (Pitangus sulphuratus), was also seen by a visitor, this time at the Hilton, Needham's Point St Michael.  This was the same location the first sighting of this species on the island was made in 2016. So both birds are on my list.   A few feasible species that ebird February target list suggested were Barn Swallow Hirundo rustica, Yellow-crowned Parrot (Amazona ochrocephala), and Yellow-crowned Night-Heron (Nyctanassa violacea) will also be on my radar.  So on to the second week of February. 

110/10 Big Year Update

Lifer 147, Year 70 - Baltimore Oriole

January 2022 was the best month of birding I have ever had on this little rock, EVER! It was simply awesome right down to the last day.  Look at these stats, 73 species seen for the month, a new personal record, 4 lifers, tons of rare and mega rare birds. let’s first look at what happened in the last week of January.

Final Week

In the final week of January, I saw five year-birds, with two, which included a lifer, on the very last day of the month.  On Sunday 23rd, I birded with my son, who is also doing a big year, in the south and east of the island.  The bird he really wanted to see was the Northern Parula (Setophaga Americana) at Graeme Hall, which would have been a lifer for him.  After not seeing it we continued birding the areas along the south coast slowly moving on to the east coast, with him collecting a few year-birds of his own along the way.  Of course, these were birds I have already seen until we got to Woodbourne Shorebird Refuge (WSR) to see four Lesser Scaups (Aythya affinis) that were there from late last year. 

#69 - Northern Shoveler

It was there that I saw my first new bird for the week a Northern Shoveler (Spatula clypeata).  Surprisingly I only noticed this very unique duck while examining the photographs taken on the day.   Bird Number 70 came on the 26^th and it was a shocker. Happily unlike my previous shocker for the year, the yet-to-be-identified blurry image of a warbler at Turners Hall Woods, I was able to capture a few serviceable images of this bird, a beautiful male Baltimore Oriole (Icterus galbula) at Chimborazo St. Joseph.  Later that afternoon I got one of my targeted birds for the week a Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus).  This male was hunting for bats over the Scotland District valley bordering St. Thomas, St. Joseph, and St. Andrew. Then on the very last day of the month, I added Orange-winged Parrot

Lifer 148, Year 73 - Cape May Warbler

(Amazona amazonica) and Barbados lifer #148, a Cape May Warbler (Setophaga tigrina). The latter was first seen by John Webster at the Graeme Hall Swamp on January 23rd.

February's Goals

I would like more lifers! January has spoiled me into thinking 150+ lifers is possible by year-end.  In February, finding the identity of the blurred bird in the image from Turner Hall will be a priority, also birding Graeme Hall and other wooded areas for songbirds and other migrants. Caribbean Martin (Progne dominicensis) is just one of the forty-four species ebird.org Target Species highlighted for the month.  About five of those birds, like the above mentioned, the odds of seeing them are very high, 70 – 100%, another 15 about 10 -30% while the most of them lie between 0 – 5% chance of seeing.  Let’s see if the trend started in January continues as we enter the 2^nd month of the 110/10 Big Year.