New BIGBY birds

In addition to the FOS Eastern Phoebe on my walk this morning, I picked up another two new birds for my 2008 BIGBY List: Ring-necked Pheasant and Killdeer.

Ring-necked Pheasants are native to Asia, and have been released by hunters and fish and game departments all across the country for over 100 years. Its not clear that there are any really established populations of these birds in my county, so perhaps this was just a released bird that survived the annual hunt this year. As I was walking along the hike and bike path, a male pheasant strutted across the trail about 100 yards ahead of me, and disappeared into the trees along Perkiomen Creek. (photo:wikipedia)

Killdeer are rather uncommon nesting birds in this part of the world. They were much more common where I lived in Austin. Here I mostly hear them at the local high school, where there are large athletic fields for them to feed in. Today I heard one flying over the field across the creek from the hike and bike path, perhaps a half mile or so from the school where I heard my FOS Killdeer a couple weeks ago.

Day List: 36 species (180% of Bird RDA)
2008 List: 284 species
BIGBY List: 56 species