While I didn't get to participate in an official Christmas Bird Count, I did to a lot of birding on the beach during the week of Christmas! My parents brought my family and my brother's family from Chicago all together on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. We had a great time together, and I still did manage to get away at least once a day to scan the shores, dunes and trees of the Atlantic Ocean coast on this beautiful island. “The country abounds with grapes, large figs and peaches, the wood with deer, conies, turkeys, quails, curlues, plovers, teile, herons… swans, geese, cranes, duck and mallard and innumerable waterfowl…” I like this shot as it shows the relative sizes of the gulls that loiter on the beach and the "peeps" that run the beach under them, almost between their legs! Sanderling, Calidris alba, is a small sandpiper shore bird. Two sleeping Ring-billed Gulls, Larus delawarensis. Hilton Head Island beach, South Carolina USA in winter, December 2019. Ash-throated FlycatcherI was following a Cooper's Hawk down the peach when up popped a flycatcher into a pine tree along the sand dunes. My first thought was Great-crested Flycatcher, for that is what I've seen here in the southeast... but only in the summer. When the Merlin app wouldn't pull up any flycatchers as likely for this time of year, I began to wonder. I posted it up on iNaturalist and soon began to get some more experienced folks to weigh in. Turns out is a vagrant Ash-throated Flycatcher. There was a nice discussion thread here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/36889389. From Cornell: "The Ash-throated Flycatcher is a rare but regular vagrant to the East Coast. Individuals turn up nearly every year across the U.S. and they have been found in all coastal states and provinces. See where they have been seen at eBird." And one not quite a bird...
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