Greater Yellowlegs - Lifer

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Taken at a small swamp area outside Mathews VA, the Greater Yellowlegs was one of my several “lifers” on Friday.  The Greater Yellowlegs breed in the northern areas of Canada and migrate down to southern points throughout the North and Mid-atlantic coasts.  Sadly according to Audubon, the species has a high vulnerability rate due to climate changes throughout its breeding and migration routes.

Yellow-billed Cuckoo - Life Bird

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Accidently got another Life Bird this week. I saw some movement outside my laundry room door so I grabbed my camera, slowly opened it and got these shots before the bird flew off. Not knowing what it was I searched my books and then Google, still didn’t find it so I asked on my birding groups on Facebook and the consensus was a Yellow-billed Cuckoo. He/she is very cute I will say.

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Eastern Wood-pewee - Life Bird

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Crazy story…  I took this photo last week in our backyard and saved the image thinking it was a young Phoebe.  Today (8/7) I was looking at E-bird researching a new trail to explore and saw a sighting of an Eastern Wood-Pewee. Never having seen or heard of this bird before I did what all good birders do, Google’d images of it and found several which showed me this was the bird I photographed in the back yard last week. Later this evening I was in the backyard and this Pewee was sitting on the fence singing.  As I watched it I opened my Merlin Bird ID and played the song and call.  The cutie answered right back to both.  Both the call and song matched perfectly.  

And this is how I saw and identified my first Eastern Wood-Pewee 😀