My birding partner is broken, E. stretched the ligaments in her knee and now she can't walk, it makes us have to adapt. Sometimes I have to get out of the vehicle, find the bird and then position the vehicle so that she can see him, we flush a lot of birds.

We've been out quite a bit as the weather has been great until yesterday's blizzard. We should be used to it by now, but no. Now that the storm is over people say the Snows will come, maybe it's true, E. saw either a Snow or a Ross's Goose last evening, Gordon shot at it but missed, now he says it's bad luck to kill the first one you shoot at. The first Canada Geese arrived in mid April and the Redpolls seem to be nesting as we are not finding many. We saw  European Starlings on the day we figure that they got here, they weren't here one day and then we saw lots the next. We've seen many American Tree and Fox Sparrows. Its seems like more Dark-eyed Juncos than any other year, many of the ducks are here but we are waiting for Scaups, Oldsquaws, Eiders and Loons. There are so many raptures about, some people are telling us about a Gyrfalcon (white) but we think it's a Juvenile Rough Legged Hawk, we're also hearing of a Golden Eagle but we're seeing a Juvenlie Bald.

We've seen some Rusty Blackbirds and actually got to watch one sing the other day. The first time we saw them we found two and the next day there were six. We couldn't find much one day so we spent about a 1/2  hour listening to the Pine Grosbeak singing in Mrs. B's yard. I've never read anything about him being a singer but he sounds lovely.

We moved to Jim T.'s feeder and sat for about twenty minutes, I saw a little bit of black moving about but didn't say anything then E. asked what I was looking at and I told her Chickadee sssshhhh. We were very quiet and he came out for a while, that was E.'s first look and after three years of looking we saw him so much he turned into Chickadee-Schmickadee. Not really, he's a great little bird that Boreal Chickadee. He's much less tame than the Blackcaps that I grew up with, they would be visable a lot at the cottage.

So the season is off and running and I will probably be out in the field, we have decided to start our lists again because now we are more sure of what we are doing. I don't really trust some of the ID's we made, I think that I called a Fox Sparrow a Gray-cheeked Thrush and who knows who else I got wrong as I learned. There are some birds that we are keeping, birds from kidhood Blue Jay, Cardinal, etc. and some that may never show up here again American Avocett (I know what I saw and it was confirmed) Great Black-backed Gull ( I was with Bonnie when I saw it), Belted Kingfisher (he couldn't have been anyone else) and on and on. The way I figure it is it's my list so it's my rules.