October Birding Mojo continues, or how random turns lead to birds.

October turned out to be a huge month for FOY for me with 2 more being added since my last post.  Both were purely "accidental" finds where I just happened to go somewhere I hadn't intended.  After all my whining about no shorebird habitat I found a nice large mudflat within my 5MR.  The farm pond I had dipped on Common Gallinule in August I remember had some flooded farm area, so I at the last minute on my way to Homer decided to swing by there.  A very large mudflat was right in that same spot that was previously a flooded part of the corn field.  I could not believe this spot was so close and such good habitat.  I am left to wonder what else may have visited this site the past couple of months. This site gave up FOY Pectoral Sandpipers, along with Killdeer, both Yellowlegs and Wilson's Snipes.  

2 days after this I was headed to the same mudflat but did a hard brake on B DR N and turned down 10.5 Mile Road.  I thought one of the Sandhill Cranes looked a little light, it wasn't.  Turned out mixed in with a large group of Canada Geese were at least 6 Cackling Geese.  They took off shortly thereafter and headed to the West.  I later located what I think were the same birds on Beadle Lake.  Finally we got one of the 4 "rare" Geese to show up here.  

The Cackling Geese gave me 10 FOY this month.  Past May I've never had more than 7 in a month.  Twice in June, and twice in December.  Needless to say I feel much better about getting one more to get to 200 for the year.  It also puts us at 213 for the year.  Still a little behind to get above the 218 eBird high.  Not out of question, but we'd need some mix of the following:

• Baird's Sandpiper (might be too late now) - 10/28/18
• White-rumped Sandpiper (again to late, and I haven't seen them pop up much this year) - 10/28/17
• Lesser Black-backed Gull - 12/16/18
• Long-tailed Duck - 12/8/18
• Golden Eagle - 11/11/18
• Snow Goose - 4/12/18
• Greater White-fronted Goose - 3/11/18
• Ross's Goose (no Fall/Winter records for us yet) - 3/4/18
• Snowy Owl - 2/21/18
• Brewer's Blackbird - 10/2/16
• Red-throated Loon - 11/29/15
• Franklin's Gull - 11/14/15
• Iceland Gull - 3/28/15
• Glaucous Gull - 12/31/14
• Northern Goshawk - 1/24/15
• Northern Saw-whet Owl - 12/14/14

The Finch forecast doesn't look promising for any winter finches this year.  

Brooks Nature Area also gave me some great close up looks at a fishing Belted Kingfisher.  It was nearly directly overhead hovering and did dive in once.  I of course missed the dive on camera as the dive was so quick I couldn't keep the camera on it well enough to stay in focus.