Happy New Year everyone! Slow start to the year for me. I fell sick with COVID-19 on 12/30 which kept me homebound for over a week before I started testing negative. First time I left my apartment again, found my car's hybrid battery more or less dead and so I've been without a car. Still am.
Naturally, this has made birding pretty difficult going into the new year. Depending on when I get settled with a new vehicle, it may be a while yet before I can start bringing in much. That said, I have picked up a handful of birds incidentally, mostly from my apartment window or at work.
1) Northern Cardinal Cardinalis cardinalis
2) European Starling Sturnus vulgaris
3) Canada Goose Branta canadensis
4) Mute Swan Cygnus olor
5) Ring-Billed Gull Larus delawarensis
6) Red-Tailed Hawk Buteo jamaicensis
7) Domestic Pigeon Columba livia
8) American Crow Corvus brachyrhynchos
Caught a bit of a break this weekend, though. Visiting my partner's family in New Jersey, I managed to borrow her car for a few hours early in the morning to pick up a very exciting vagrant that popped up in early December. The bird's been living in the thin patch of woods behind a home in a private neighborhood. Thankfully, the homeowner's have been nice enough to allow birders to visit to see the bird so long as they follow by their rules (no parking in the community, remain on the patio, respect other residents' properties). Made for a very nice first lifer for the year.
9) Northern Mockingbird Mimus polyglottos
10) American Robin Turdus migratorius
11) Carolina Chickadee Poecile carolinensis
12) Red-Flanked Bluetail Tarsiger cyanurus
13) Tufted Titmouse Baeolophus bicolor
14) Turkey Vulture Cathartes aura
15) Mourning Dove Zenaida macroura
~Thylo
The first few were just coincidence and common urban birds, but I did go on a small walk in Windsor Nature Park yesterday. The main goal of the walk was to find a male King Bird-of-Paradise which was recently spotted there. While I knew that spotting the bird was useless (it wouldn't count here too, as it most likely is an escapee), I still wanted to give it a shot. And just as I suspected, I did not find it 
. Birds proved to be few and far between in the area, but the sighting of a wild colugo more than made up for it. I was expecting to see this species at the zoo, but a colugo is a colugo, so I'll take it.