Birding with Friends

Thursdays are my birding days, since my schedule is wonderfully blank. :) A couple of weeks ago I spent the whole day birding and even brought a couple of friends along, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. Both were very good sports, although my afternoon buddy gets the gold for putting up with my ridiculousness as we wandered around looking for a ruffed grouse, but I'll get to that in a moment.

Rob very admirably left the comfort of bed behind and came to join me in the morning at the marina on the west shore of Braddock Bay.
I got to show him a good variety of ducks, then brought him to the hawkwatch for a visit before he had to head off to work. Next I met up with my friend Chris for some more birding.

As for the grouse (which we did not end up seeing, or hearing), I had looked it up on eBird the day before, and written down the name of the road, figuring I'd just get out my map since I knew the general area it was in, but according to my map, the road doesn't exist. After some wandering, we stopped at a gas station and asked for directions. We left with the BEST MAP EVER :P
(and yes, I kept it)
Chris had fun teasing me when I brought him to the hawkwatch.
Hawkwatch regular: "Now, this is a different guy than you had up here this morning, right?"
Chris (jokingly shocked): "How many guys do you bring up here?!"
Me: "I told you I brought Rob earlier!"

Such silliness. :P We ended the day with some good pizza.

Just 9 more days until we set up the mist nets for songbird banding season!

Take nothing but pictures (and maybe the trash of jerks who came before you), leave nothing but footprints.