Dip, Dip and More Dips!!

For those who are unfamiliar with the word dip, it's a word that a birder and more appropriately a twitcher never wants to use. Basically it means searching for, but not seeing a rarity that was reported. Things have been heating up a bit on the birding front in Newfoundland (did things ever cool down?) with several good birds arriving from the south of the last week to ten days, unfortunately I've missed a couple of good ones.

Yesterday I searched in vain for several hours for a an immature male Summer Tanager.It had been seen feeding from a suet feeder and since it was snowing yesterday I figured it would surely still be attending the feeder, but no such luck. In the week before I has travelled to see a long staying Tree Sparrow and a newly arrived yellow-bellied Sapsucker and missed both of those.Not to mention I've failed to see the Rough-legged hawk that wintered near St.John's despite looking for about at least 5 times more than anyone else! Heck, even people visiting for just a single day saw this bird.

Anyway, I'll end my lament here and look ahead to the future. The next 10-15 days are bound to be very exciting since we are now getting into prime time for Euro rarities, southern vagrants and our own breeders will be heading back en masse over the next few weeks as well. All we need now is some weather. Ideally, we'll be looking for low pressure systems that move quickly from the south, bringing southern birds with them. Then after they drop off the southern vagrants they position themselves between Newfoundland and Iceland redirecting Icelandic breeders returning from the UK.

Though I'll be busy working and birding over the next few days, I plan on posting a much more detailed blog about the types of weather systems I mention above. I've also been doing some thinking about potential new birds that could be added to the Newfoundland list. I'll be posting a top ten soon to be found in Newfoundland list in the next week, so check back!