Saturday/Sunday lifer-rama at Cape May

A flock of double-crested cormorants flies over the Nature Conservancy's refuge area, which used to be known as "the meadows."

Despite the rainy conditions on Friday and most of Saturday, I made my goal of 20 lifers (plus another 11!) at Cape May. At one point on Sunday morning at Higbee Beach, we stood in front of two or three trees for like half an hour with bird after bird landing there and sharp-shinned hawks flying overhead. I was kinda hoping to see a kill, but we were spared any carnage. We finally had to surrounder our sweet spot to the next group of birders, or we might still be there today.

My lifers list:
American Wigeon
Blue-winged Teal
Gadwall
Northern Pintail
Northern Shoveler
Ruddy Duck
Snowy Egret

Pectoral Sandpiper
Black Skimmer
Surf Scoter
Bonaparte's Gull
Great Black-backed Gull
Herring Gull
Laughing Gull
Royal Tern
Forster's Tern
Sanderling
Merlin
Northern Harrier
Peregrine Falcon
Sharp-shinned Hawk
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Yellow-rumped Warbler (finally!)
Black-throated Green Warbler
Blue Grosbeak
Blue-headed Vireo
Clay-colored Sparrow
Savannah Sparrow
Common Yellowthroat (finally!)
Purple Finch (finally!)
Ruby-crowned Kinglet

In total, I saw over 75 species during the weekend, which isn’t bad considering the amount of rain we had. UPDATE! Thanks to Patrick, I've adjusted my count to 31 lifers with that pectoral sandpiper (photo below). Now my lifelist count is now officially at 152, since I got serious about birding in 2006 and started keeping a lifelist.

It seems like it’s been a lot longer than that, but maybe that's because I’ve been looking at birds since I was a kid. I would never have guessed I'd come so far so fast (or it seems far and fast to me, anyway).

I ate some great food, made some good friends, got a copy of Kingbird Highway (which Taryn at Houghton Mifflin was kind enough to give me), and learned a ton about raptor ID, not to mention birding fieldcraft. I also met Pete Dunne, got some neat t-shirts for Kat and Em and me, and got a nice new comfy strap for my binocs.

I’ll be thinking back to this trip for a long time, always with a certain wistfulness right along with the joy. I miss Cape May, and I miss the birds.

Here are a few shots I got on Saturday:

a mated pair of American wigeons; I love their little call:
Sanderlings on the beach:

Pectoral sandpipers (thanks, Patrick!):

My best shot yet of a great blue heron:

Birdchick gives a presentation on blogging:

There were many people there who were geniunely curious and then excited about the prospect of getting on the Web. Directly to Birdchick's right is Mike of 10,000 Birds. What a great guy; he's the one who really started the whole bird-blogging scene. I handed out my card to several people during the festival; if you're one of them, visiting my blog for the first time, hello!

Sunday was another eventful day; I had a lot of trouble, however, with my batteries. Still, I'll try to post some Sunday photos later.