Chirps and Cheeps

I hope you and yours had a wonderful Christmas Day yesterday!  It was very busy at our house the last few days since it was our year to host for the family. There's lots of exciting things going on in bird world these days too: the Christmas Bird Count, irruptive sightings, and Snowy Owl sightings down by the waterfront.

The guests have gone, the house back in order, and today brought a peaceful "day-after".  It was a of relaxation and my favorite activity, birding!  I don't think I mentioned it, but on my last birding trip to Rochester, looking for irruptive finches, I broke a rib at Braddock Bay.  Somehow, I managed to trip over my own two feet, fell down, and landed hard right on top of my camera.  Ouch!  I didn't realize it until days later that I had broken a rib.  So, today was the first time out since then - and my son drove me down to the Buffalo Marina to see if we could find the Snowy Owl that folks have been reporting.  Unfortunately, no such luck...

We did find a consolation lifer for me, though - a Common  Goldeneye.  We also spotted a Common Merganser, and I think another lifer, a Great Black-backed Gull.  I'm guessing this over Lesser Black-backed in that the back coloring is a much more black-black than the dark gray of the Lesser. I'm posting the photo, but this guy was so far away, I don't think it will help much with his ID.

After we gave up waiting for the Snowy Owl to show, we headed back home to find two Common Redpolls at the thistle feeders.  They had joined around 30 Pine Siskins who were also competing for the thistle.  I had a feeling we'd see some redpolls today.  And I'm hoping more will show tomorrow after the foot of snow we got tonight. Snow always gets our feeders hopping.  And I'm very glad I got them all topped off today before the snow came!