Saturday Birding

Read about my Saturday birding experiences.

Welcome back to The Birder's Way. I'm your host Caleb Shingleton. I want to thank you for clicking on this post! It really does mean a lot to me. If you willingly would, I'd appreciate it if you could hit the subscribe button. Then you'll be notified when I make a new post.

First thing that happened Friday morning was, I woke up, ate breakfast and looked at my phone. I saw I had a few notifications from a birding GroupMe group I'm in. They were talking about the Gull species that were at a lake that's approximately 6 miles away from where I live. Plus what makes the deal even better is that there were two different Tern species there, Caspian Tern (Hydroprogne caspia), and Forster’s Tern (Sterna forsteri). Those are really cool birds! They would have been lifers for me. Unfortunately I didn't get to go to the lake Friday. So Saturday morning I got up, ate breakfast, and gathered my birding gear. I birded my owner piece of property first. Had pretty good results too. Here is my eBird checklist so you can see the results for yourself if you'd like: eBird Checklist. Ruby-crowned Kinglet was actually a lifer for me. I found it right behind my house, surprisingly! I get Golden-crowned Kinglets quite a bit during the winter months here in West Virginia. Around 11:30 me and my dad headed to Tygart Lake where the Terns and gulls were spotted. It started raining almost immediately after we got there. At first all I saw were the species on this eBird checklist: eBird Checklist. Honestly it was cool hearing the first Yellow-throated Warblers of the year, but I was just hoping I would be able to get a Gull or Tern. So we went to a different location around Tygart Lake. I actually had pretty good results! I finally got the Gull I was looking for, hooray 🎉! There were three beautiful Ring-billed Gulls flying above the water looking for a fresh fish flavored meal.

Photo by Maksym Dashko on Unsplash

It was my first time seeing a Gull since I was a little boy when we visited Holden Beach, North Carolina. It sure made me happy once I finally found a Gull! It wasn't rare by any means, but it sure was a special moment for me.

I even got a few pictures of some other bird species while at Tygart Lake.

That's an American Robin, he's looking royal indeed.

That's a photo of a Ring-billed Gull (Larus delawarensis) I got while it was flying fairly low to the water. A cool sighting indeed!

I also photo bombed these pair of beautiful Mallard Ducks. They got really close to me, so I was able to get pretty good photos with my old Canon EOS Rebel XS with a 55-250mm lens. The simple Mallard is really beautiful to be completely honest.

There's a killdeer (Charadrius vociferous) to end this post with. I just love those funny little shorebirds.

Well I hope you enjoyed this post! Hopefully it brought you some joy as it indeed did for me while I was experiencing it all.

If you did enjoy reading this post, I'd really appreciate it if you’d share it with friends and family. Let's grow the birding community together!

Until next time, happy birding!

Written by, Caleb Shingleton

The Birder's Way Discord Server