Friday, January 21, 2011

AZ - YELLOW-BILLED LOON - 01/19




Yellow-billed Loon - first-winter, Colorado River near Parker, La Paz Co., AZ. January 19th, 2011. Images taken using Canon Powershot A495 handheld through Swarovski HD telescope.

This bird was frequenting both sides of the AZ/CA state line on the Colorado River just north of Parker and was originally found by David Vander Plyum et al on January 15th. Susannah and I failed to find it on January 16th en route to the Salton Sea, but I tried again on January 19th and eventually found the bird off Riverside Drive about 3 miles north of the Blue Water Casino.


For my money, the most exciting of the loons with a unique jizz and well worth the drive (about 3 hours from Phoenix). Remarkably, this was my third Yellow-billed Loon in Arizona, the other two also coming from the Colorado River - one at Havasu City in Feb 2001 and one on Lake Havasu in Feb 2008.


JPS

3 comments:

Kathie Brown said...

You are birding a portion of AZ I never got to in the 3 1/2 years I lived near Tucson. How wonderful to see this bird! I now live in MA and took a drive over to Turner Falls earlier this month because of your blog. While I did not find the Iceland Gull, I did find a snow goose and what I think are cackling geese. I posted pictures on my blog.

Good thing you are out there. We are getting swamped by snow just now!

Michael said...

Great shots of an awesome bird; however, I don't think I could pick a favourite loon!

Larry said...

Great shots of the loon. Now why couldn't this guy have made it over to Quabbin this year? Perhaps next year?