While driving back to Tucson from Phoenix on Friday, I saw what I thought was black smoke in the sky. "Something's burning," I told Gaby. Then the "smoke" rapidly changed direction. "Wait, those are birds!" I shouted. This was a massive flock that seemed to go on forever. As we approached, they flew right over us and eventually paralleled us for a while. Gaby took some video on her point and shoot camera right after I first saw them. I exited the interstate and Gaby and I took these photos. It was truly amazing! These photos show only a fraction of the whole spectacle. There were 1,000's!
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| taken through the passenger window |
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| taken at 100mm |
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| taken at 400mm |
Click here to watch the video
Holy cow! What were they? That's a lot of birds!
ReplyDeleteThe ones I saw at the end of the flock looked like Brewer's Blackbirds. Yellow-headed Blackbirds probably made up the majority of the huge wave I first saw while driving. They've been seen in large numbers in that area before. I'm told that the male Yellow-headed Blackbirds winter here and the females winter in Mexico.
ReplyDeleteWhat an awesome sight this must have been Jeremy!
ReplyDeleteIncredible! Did you enter this data into eBird and if you did...how?
ReplyDeleteGreat question Kathie! I entered it as blackbird sp. by clicking on "Add Species" on the right-hand side of "Step 3: What did you see or hear?" I wanted to enter "1,000's" but it didn't let me, ha ha ha. So I estimated 13,000... conservatively. I'll let the eBird reviewers count the dots in the photos if they don't like my estimate. I'm not about to try!
ReplyDeleteAmazing! Glad you had your camera with you!
ReplyDelete